This morning at 8 a.m. Eastern, you can watch the live-streaming announcement from Boston of the ALA Awards (Newbery, Caldecott, Alex, CSK, Printz, etc.) at http://ala.unikron.com/2016/. I love watching this! Sometimes I know one or more of the winners or honorees; sometimes I’m just thrilled because poetry or picture books have gotten more notice than is typical. And always I love hearing the spontaneous cheers from the educators in the audience. Nobody other than the committees and authors/illustrators/editors of the honored books knows who won until this announcement ceremony, and the decisions were just finalized over the past two days, after a year of reading, emailing, discussing, advocating, and debating. I hope you are either able to watch or able to check social media during the announcements so you can also celebrate some of the best children’s/ya books from this past year!