As Dia said, there is room on our library shelves for all three of this year’s finalists and we can probably all think of students who would enjoy one or the other of the final three. My vote for this year’s Mighty Smackdown winner though goes to I’ll Give You the Sun. I’ll Give You the Sun is such a beautifully and intricately constructed/crafted novel. I appreciated the story being told through both the eyes of the brother and sister, but at different times in the narrative of their lives. Everything had a purpose or a reason for being in the story and I appreciated the depth and development of plot and character throughout the novel. As Lauren Oliver from the New York Times Book Review commented: “The book celebrates art’s capacity to heal, but it also shows us how we excavate meaning from the art we cherish, and how we find reflections of ourselves within it. . . . I’ll Give You the Sun is a dazzling mirror.”

Mighty Smackdown Choice: I’ll Give You the Sun