Congrats to the Edgar and Agatha Award Winners in #YALit and #MGLit!

I'm emerging from my winter writing cave to announce the Edgar winners and Agatha winners! For this blog (since we're YA Sleuth and all), I'll post the YA and Kid winners below:

The Edgars:

Best Juvenile

Audacity Jones Steals the Show by Kirby Larson (Scholastic — Scholastic Press)
Vanished! by James Ponti (Simon & Schuster — Aladdin)
The Assassin's Curse by Kevin Sands (Simon & Schuster — Aladdin)
First Class Murder by Robin Stevens (Simon & Schuster — Simon & Schuster BFYR)
NewsPrints by Ru Xu (Scholastic — Graphix)

Young Adult

The Cruelty by Scott Bergstrom (Macmillan Children's Publishing Group — Feiwel & Friends)
Grit by Gillian French (HarperCollins Publishers — HarperTeen)
The Impossible Fortress by Jason Rekulak (Simon & Schuster)
Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds (Simon & Schuster — Atheneum Books for Young Readers)
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas (HarperCollins Publishers — Balzer + Bray)

Agatha:

Best Children’s/Young Adult

City of Angels by Kristi Belcamino  (Polis Books)
**Sydney Mackenzie Knocks ‘Em Dead by Cindy Callaghan  (Aladdin)
The World’s Greatest Detective by Caroline Carlson  (HarperCollins)
Audacity Jones Steals the Show by Kirby Larson  (Scholastic Press)
The Harlem Charade by Natasha Tarpley  (Scholastic Press)

You can find the Edgars winners for all categories and Agatha winners (announced at Malice Domestic) at their respective websites.

CONGRATS TO ALL NOMINEES AND WINNERS!!!

Marvelous Middle Grade Monday review: The Code Busters Club #1 by Penny Warner

From the Publisher:

Cody, Quinn, Luke, and M.E. may be really different, but they all share one thing in common: they love playing around with codes. In fact, they love codes so much, they have their own private club, with a super-secret hideout and passwords that change every single day.

When Cody and Quinn notice what could be a code on the window of a nearby house, the one owned by their strange neighbor, the guy they call Skeleton Man, the club gets to work. And it is a cry for help!

Now the Code Busters are on the case—and nothing will stop them from solving the mystery and finding the secret treasure that seems to be the cause of it all!

My thoughts:

Oh, this book was such fun! Perfect for your younger middle-grade reader, ages 7-11, I would say, and equally appealing for boys and girls. The writing is tight, the characters fun, the mystery solid. I'll be checking out the rest of the series. I saw that the second book won the Agatha this year--no surprise there.

Where I found out about this book:

One of my favorite blogs, YA Book Nerd, reviewed it not too long ago. Since there are codes in the book, I thought I should check it out. Glad I did.

For more MMGM reviews, go to Shannon Messenger's blog....

Kidlit Agathas

Snatched from the lovely Janet Rudolph at Mystery Fanfare: the Agatha Noms for kidlit:

Best Children's/Young Adult:

Theodore Boone, Kid Lawyer by John Grisham
Theodosia and the Eyes of Horus by R. L. LaFevers
The Agency: A Spy in the House by Y. S. Lee
Virals by Kathy Reichs
The Other Side of Dark by Sarah Smith

Happy weekend, all!