Book Awards: January 2008 Archives

LONDON (AP) — Scottish writer and standup comedian A.L. Kennedy has won Britain’s Costa Book of the Year Award for her novel about a World War II veteran whose work as an extra on a war film forces him to confront his past.

Kennedy, 42, will receive $50,000 for her novel Day (Knopf, 288 pages, $24), which the chair of the judging panel, author Joanna Trollope, called ‘‘perfectly, beautifully written.’’

‘‘[It’s] very witty, very lyrical, it’s quite dark,’’ Trollope said this week. ‘‘Her style is arresting. There’s a shadow of James Joyce in it.’’

The American Library Association announced its annual awards for children's books while meeting in Philadelphia this week.

Baltimore librarian Laura Amy Schlitz has won this year's John Newbery Medal for best children's book for Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices From a Medieval Village (Candlewick, 96 pages, $19.99).

The book began as a project Schlitz worked on with fifth-graders studying the Middle Ages in the early '90s...