Daughter of Malcolm X among award finalists
A daughter of Malcolm X joins prize-winning authors Gary Paul-sen and M.T. Anderson among the 10 nominees on the National Book Awards' longlist for young people's literature.
Ilyasah Shabazz collaborated with Kekla Magoon on X: A Novel, a story about the early years of her father, who was assassinated in 1965 when Shabazz was just 2 years old. Paulsen was cited for This Side of Wild: Mutts, Mares, and Laughing Dinosaurs and Anderson for Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad.
The eclectic list, released on Monday by the National Book Foundation, includes a graphic novel originally serialized on the Internet and Anderson's nonfiction account of the composer Shostakovich during World War II. Nominees range from the 76-year-old Paulsen, who has written more than 100 books, to debut novelist Becky Albertalli's Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda.
