County librarian helps pick Caldecott medal winner

It sounded like Green Bay after a Packers victory.

Instead, the cheering came from librarians, happy and surprised (Dare I say raucous? Shhh!) when the American Library Association named The Invention of Hugo Cabret as the winner of the Caldecott medal for the most distinguished American picture book of 2008. Listen to NPR's report HERE.

Brian Selznick's 544-page "novel" was an unusual choice. For one thing, it's not a traditional children's picture book. While it's mostly a series of pencil drawings artfully telling a story about a boy's efforts to restore a mechanical automaton salvaged from the ruins of a museum in Paris, it also has many pages of text. The kid in me could hardly put it down.

The award was announced Monday at the ALA's winter meeting in Philadelphia. One of the librarians present was Rhonda Puntney of the Lakeshores Library System, which serves 15 libraries in Racine and Walworth counties, including the Racine Public Library.

Rhonda, it turns out, admits to being "one of the cheering librarians mentioned on NPR." She also was a member of the committee that selected The Invention of Hugo Cabret. "And after the overwhelmingly positive response to our choice, a very pleased committee member!"


The Caldecott winner is chosen by a 15-member committee of the Association for Library Services to Children (ALSC), a division of the American Library Association, from among 700-800 books sent by publishers.

So back to Monday's announcement. Rhonda says, "The committee met at the convention center at 6:30 a.m. and called the winners of the medal and honor books. One of the highlights of being on the committee, is that we are the first to notify the winners. And they were all gracious and very pleased to win. Later we were brought into the ballroom where the announcements were held, right in the front. I have to say, I think the audience's enthusiastic response to Hugo Cabret was overwhelming! (Several of us even held hands for support during the announcements!)"

Rhonda has been the youth services and special needs consultant at Lakeshores Library System, which is headquartered in Waterford, since 2000. Before that, she was children's librarian in Burlington. (For fun, she sings bass with the Riverport Chorus, a Sweet Adelines women's barbershop chorus.)