You can't keep a good samurai down

Editor Liz e-mailed me today with this piece of news:

I just found out that Samurai Shortstop has been selected for the 2009-2010 Eliot Rosewater Indiana High School Book Award!

The Eliot Rosewater Indiana High School Book Award (Rosie Award), sponsored by the Indiana Library Federation, is Indiana’s children’s choice award program for students in grades 9-12. Students who have read at least one of approximately 20 nominated books on the Master List are eligible to vote. The author of each year's winning book is invited to receive the Rosie Award in person at a special event sponsored by the Association for Indiana Media Educators and the Indiana Library Federation.

There's more on the award here.

I'm up against some stiff competition. Check it out:

Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian (Alexie, Sherman)

An Abundance of Katherines (Green, John)

Beauty Shop for Rent, Fully Equipped, Inquire Within (Bowers, Lisa)

Blue Bloods (de la Cruz, Melissa)

Bit Fat Manifesto (Vaught, Susan)

Deadline (Crutcher, Chris)

Everything You Want (Shoup, Barbara)

Hero (Moore, Perry)

Hurricane Season: A Coach, His Team & Their Triumph in the Time of Katrina (Thompson, Neal)

Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier (Beah, Ishmael)

Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac (Zevin, Gabrielle)

Peak (Smith, Roland)

The Plain Janes (Castellucci, Cecil)

Quiet Strength: The Principles, Practices, and Priorities of a Winning Life (Dungy, Tony)

Red Glass (Resau, Laura)

Repossessed (Jenkins, A.M.)

Samurai Shortstop (Gratz, Alan)

Sold (McCormick, Patricia)

Thousand Splendid Suns (Hosseini, Khaled)

Unwind (Shusterman, Neal)

Yellow Flag (Lipsyte, Robert)

Hrm. Yeah. That's going to be a tough one to win. Well, at least I wasn't in last year's batch of nominees. That year the winner was Twilight!

If it helps any with the voters, I will note that I dated a girl who went to Indiana University and enjoyed my visits to the Hoosier state immensely. :-)