NEW YORK 鈥� This year's winners of the Carnegie medals for fiction and nonfiction, presented by the American Library Association, have each checked out a few books in their time.
鈥淚 work from libraries a lot, and my wallet is full of library cards,鈥� says Rebecca Giggs, an Australian author whose 鈥淔athoms: The World in the Whale" received the nonfiction prize Thursday.
James McBride, the fiction winner for 鈥淒eacon King Kong,鈥� has library cards in four different cities and wrote parts of his novel in branches in New York City and Philadelphia.
鈥淚n New York you can get anything you want but it takes longer because you can't leave the library with them. But in Philly, you can,鈥� explained McBride, whose novel last year was chosen by Oprah Winfrey for her book club.
With a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the library association established the award in 2012, with winners in each category receiving $5,000. Previous honorees include Donna Tartt, Doris Kearns Goodwin and Colson Whitehead.
McBride and Giggs each have strong childhood memories of libraries. McBride, a longtime New Yorker, would visit them often because they were a 鈥渟afe space鈥� and because his family couldn't afford to buy many books. Giggs remembers her mother getting into aerobics 鈥渋n a big way鈥� and , a few nights a week, dropping off her and her sister at a library next door to the workout space.
Ghost stories were a
鈥淓specially 鈥榯rue histories of the paranormal鈥� with photographs of poltergeists that were in fact only smudges, or the developer鈥檚 accidental thumbprints, in attic-windows and on staircases,鈥� she says 鈥淏ack then, as now, I was interested in the boundary-lines between fact, documentation, and belief 鈥� a theme that threads through 鈥楩athoms,鈥� which is as much about the myths whales sustain, as the science of animal-life in the oceans of the 21st century.鈥�
Hillel Italie, The Associated Press
