Every year, I participate in my workplace’s Mock Printz program for staff. We nominate and read a bunch of books throughout the year, choose a shortlist of up to ten books, and then invite all library staff to a big discussion near the end of January to decide upon a winner and honors.

This year, we met the Friday before the actual Youth Media Awards were announced. We picked The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo as our winner, which is also the title the real Printz Committee chose! It’s always exciting when that happens. The two previous years I’ve participated, an honor book we selected was chosen as the winner or the winner we selected ended up being an honor.

We picked three honor books this year, none of which made an appearance on the real Printz honor list: The Astonishing Color of After by Emily X. R. Pan, Hey Kiddo by Jarrett Krosoczka, and Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi.

As for the real honors, well…our Mock Printz committee didn’t even consider them as a group. We can only get to so many books in a year (we don’t read nearly as much as the real committee does!), and we never got around to nominating or reading the three chosen. I had already read Damsel by Elana K. Arnold, and I’m pretty torn about it. I thought it was pretty solid for most of it, and then I reached a bit near the end that just threw me completely out of the story. It’s not a major plot point, but for me, it made the book feel a bit silly and deflated some of its impact.

I’m already excited to start digging into this year’s potential Printz books!