We did it! We picked five National Book Award finalists for 2013, and they announced today, Oct 16. 

It was HARD to decide because we members of the committee adored all top ten books. But I am proud to share with you our choices, and a winner will be decided at a big fancy ceremony in late November.

The concrete info below is cribbed from the NBA's wonderful site -- but  you should click over to it because they have published a FREE EBOOK of excerpts from all 20 finalists in the four categories. So for free, you can read bits of all the contenders before the big event November 20. 

FINALISTS:

Kathi Appelt, The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp 
(Atheneum Books for Young Readers/Simon & Schuster)

Cynthia Kadohata, The Thing About Luck (Atheneum Books for Young Readers/Simon & Schuster)

Tom McNeal, Far Far Away (Alfred A. Knopf/Random House)

Meg Rosoff, Picture Me Gone (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, a division of Penguin Group USA)

Gene Luen Yang, Boxers & Saints (First Second/Macmillan)

LONGLIST:

- Kate DiCamillo, Flora and Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures (Candlewick Press)
- Lisa Graff, A Tangle of Knots (Philomel, A division of Penguin Group USA)
- Alaya Dawn Johnson, The Summer Prince (Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic) 
- David Levithan, Two Boys Kissing (Knopf Books for Young Readers/Random House) 
- Anne Ursu, The Real Boy (Walden Pond Press/an Imprint HarperCollinsPublishers)

JUDGES:

Deb Caletti, Cecil Castellucci, Peter Glassman, E. Lockhart, Lisa Von Drasek