The Audies

Operation Yes won an Audie last night! I had zip to do with the audio book production (other than, ahem, writing the "script") but I'm happy the terrific work by narrator Jessica Almasy (who handled the huge cast of Operation Yes beautifully) and the Audible.com team was recognized. Also, grateful to my agent, the always wonderful Tina Wexler, for negotiating the audio rights in the first place.

Here's the slate of Children's/YA awards:

CHILDREN’S TITLES FOR AGES UP TO 8 For excellence in narration, direction, engineering, mix, and abridgment (when applicable) of a children’s audiobook. Audiobooks accompanied by book product are accepted in this category: Louise, the Adventures of a Chicken by Kate DiCamillo, narrated by Barbara Rosenblat (Live Oak Media)

CHILDREN’S TITLES FOR AGES 8-12 For excellence in narration, direction, engineering, mix, and abridgment (when applicable) of a children’s audiobook for middle readers: Operation Yes by Sara Holmes, narrated by Jessica Almasy (Audible, Inc.)

TEEN For excellence in narration, direction, engineering, mix, and abridgment (when applicable) of a young adult audiobook: Peace, Locomotion by Jacqueline Woodson, narrated by Dion Graham (Brilliance Audio)

Oh, and I'm excited to see that Connie Willis's intelligent and amusing story, Bellwether, won in the Science Fiction category.

The full list is here.

You can listen to a sample of the Operation Yes audio book at the Audible.com site.

Two incredibly cool things

It's not even 9:00 here, and I've already had enough good news to call it a day.

First up, the teacher in Operation Yes, Miss Loupe, is now one of A Year of Reading's 100 Cool Teachers! Read the blog post in which she's nominated, and then go look at the whole list. Here's a preview of what A Year of Reading so generously said:

"This is a fabulous book that sheds light on a culture that has been ignored in children's literature -- the culture of military families, military bases, military schools. This is a must-read. You will laugh, you will cry, and your heart will fill with gratitude and understanding, in a way that it perhaps has not before, for all those who serve for a greater cause."

I'm honored and delighted, because A Year of Reading is the creative outlet for two real-life Cool Teachers (and authors) themselves, Franki and Mary Lee, who not only serve in their classrooms, but in the wider Kidlitosphere too.

Secondly, the audio version of Operation Yes is now available for download at Audible.com, read by the talented Jessica Almasy, who won an Audie last year for her reading of Sara Pennypacker's Clementine. You can read a fascinating interview with Jessica about her work here. A snippet:

Sometimes--I am just articulating this as I write this--- I am thinking (and I use that in the most blood and gutsy sense of the word)—I am thinking about how the character sees from his eye sockets. So as to determine how the voice comes out. Or how tall he is. This reminds me of the Balinese mask work I did with a Dutchman in college.

Practice also helps—doing pieces of text aloud before the session. Somehow I have a major block against doing this that much—there is always something so different that happens when I am in the actual recording session. The book energy takes prominence so it’s different from just trying it out on the subway etc. But yes, I would say, practice.

I think it, for me, is like a interior skull cabinet of file shuffling. The rearrangement of thin and energized sound lenses.

And above all, the power of whatever it is that is bigger than all of us where the stories come in.

Yes! Yes! Yes!

Okay, now to live up to this good news by working hard the rest of the day . . .