Prairie Bud Nominees 2008-2009

James Howe

Catina wants to be a famous writer. Houndsley is an excellent cook. Catina thinks Houndsley is a wonder. Houndsley thinks Catina is a very good friend. So what should Houndsley say about Catina’s seventy-four-chapter memoir? And can Catina find the right words of comfort for Houndsley after the big cooking contest fiasco?

Grade Level: 1-3
Publisher: Candlewick Press

Michelle Knudsen

No roaring allowed. That's the only stipulation Miss Merriweather the librarian places on her unusual new visitor at storytime: a lion. He turns out to be a model patron, “doing things without being asked. He dusted the encyclopedias. He licked the envelopes.” But a thorny dilemma arises when Miss Merriweather falls and injures her arm: Should the lion break the rules and roar for help?

Grade Level: K-3
Publisher: Candlewick Press

Margaret Read MacDonald

A childless woman prays to Allah for progeny and is rewarded with a mischievous little cooking pot with human attributes. One day, despite her mother’s worries, Little Pot insists on going out into the world. But she only finds trouble which convinces her to stay home until she is old enough to have learned right from wrong.

Grade Level: K-3
Publisher: Marshall Cavendish

Fran Manushkin

Little, flat Sonny Shivers and his family only know it’s cold and dark where they live, and whenever the earth quakes, a monstrous hand, reaching forth in a great flash of light, snatches away part of their landscape — Buttery Cliffs, towering Mt. Ketchup… and with the landscape goes his family, one by one, until only Sonny is left to face the monsters. Who are they? What and where is the Shivers family?

Grade Level: K-3
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group

Barbara McClintock

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Grade Level: K-3
Publisher: When Adele walks her little brother Simon home from school he loses one more thing at every stop: his drawing of a cat at the grocer's shop, his books at the park, his crayons at the art museum, and more.