ALA Youth Media Awards Announced January 23, 2012!

Tomorrow in Dallas (7:45 a.m. CT on Jan.23, 2012), the American Library Association (ALA) will  announce the top awards in children’s and young adult literature as part of the ALA Midwinter Meeting, January 20 - 24.

(Please see the video at the bottom of this post.)

The ALA Youth Media Awards honor children’s and young adult authors and illustrators, as well as producers of children’s audio and video materials.

Known worldwide for the high quality they represent, the ALA Youth Media Awards are selected under a cloak of secrecy by national judging committees composed of librarians and other children’s literature experts.


The ALA will announce 18 awards, including the renowned Caldecott and Newbery Medals, the Coretta Scott King Book Awards and Printz award.

  The books honored serve as a guide for parents, educators, librarians and those interested in providing children and teens with the very best reading and viewing materials.

Be sure to tune in.  And you parents out there, this is a great list for books for your kids and grandkids.

One-Year Anniversary of Gulf Capping...and Spills Continue Around the Globe

Just one year ago, on July 15, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill brought to us by BP and Transocean, was successfully capped after pouring 4.9 million barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico.


Gulf Coast fishermen try to save an oil-drenched pelican.

One year later-more of the same.

 (Photo:Ho New/Reuters)

One year later impacts of the spill continue to affect the health of Gulf Coast residents, the safety of the region’s seafood and the economies of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.

 $20 billion was set aside by BP for those whose lives and livelihoods were most impacted.  So far less than $5 billion has been handed out, and BP, citing the area’s “robust recovery,” says that should be sufficient.

Four big leaks have been reported in just the past two weeks:

An Exxon Mobil pipeline burst beneath the Yellowstone River, flooding the pristine waterway with more than 42,000 gallons of crude oil. While the line was reportedly shut down within seven minutes, the leak continued for more than an hour.

A pair of undersea leaks in the ConocoPhillips oilfield—Penglai 19-3, China’s largest—spilled up to 7,000 barrels of oil into Bohai Bay, spreading over more than 325 square miles. Slicks seven miles long and 500 yards wide were reported.

An explosion and oil spill at the Pengrowth Energy Facility near Swan Hills, Alberta, dumped 1,000 barrels of oil into nearby Judy Creek, which flows into the Freeman River, a tributary of the Athabasca River.

A New Hampshire company—Sprague Energy—leaked up to 100 barrels of oil into the Piscataqua River via a “small hole” in a delivery pipe. Company officials admitted a pinhole resulted in a “spraying” of fuel for up to two hours.

This is a tragic reminder of how little has changed since the Deepwater Horizon spill of April 20, 2010.

One Pelican at a Time:  A Story of the Gulf Oil Spill

Needed now more than ever before!

Bumper Crop of Pelican Chicks on Gaillard Island, Alabama

As this year’s crop of baby pelicans hatch out on Gaillard Island in Mobile Bay, biologists in Alabama are breathing a sigh of relief. At the midpoint of the first nesting season since the BP oil spill, the manmade rookery is housing a bumper crop.  At 1,300 acres, this island is one of the largest pelican nesting areas on the upper Gulf Coast.

Baby Brown Pelicans on Gaillard Island, Alabama (2011)

I think there is an uptick in the number of pelicans out there, and maybe even royal terns. Overall, it looks like a great year, said Roger Clay, with the state Division of Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries.

Back in the early 1990s, shortly after the island was created out of the dirt dug up to make the Theodore Industrial Canal, around 1,000 pairs of pelicans showed up to nest. This year, there are 4,000 to 6,000 pairs, along with more than 10,000 pairs of gulls, herons, ibis and terns.
 
The 8,000 pelicans are now raising around 16,000 chicks, while the 20,000 gulls and other birds are raising around 40,000 chicks, meaning there are more than 80,000 birds on the island.

 We can always throw that caveat that we won’t know for years if the spill caused a problem, but a good hunch is that in the short term, it doesn’t appear to have had an effect, Clay said last week.

He said nearly every kind of shorebird common in the state nests on Gaillard. The island is prime bird habitat for two reasons: there are no predators and there are no people.