Librarians cite one of their own

A Baltimore librarian’s classroom project is now part of publishing history. “Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!: Voices From a Medieval Village,” first conceived a decade ago by Laura Amy Schlitz, is this year’s winner of the John Newbery Medal for best children’s book.

The Randolph Caldecott award for top picture book went to Brian Selznick’s “The Invention of Hugo Cabret,” a 500-plus page hybrid of a graphic novel and traditional illustration about an orphan boy and a robot in Paris at the turn of the 20th century.

Also Monday, science-fiction author Orson Scott Card won the Margaret A. Edwards Award for “lifetime achievement in writing for young adults.” Mo Willems’ “There Is a Bird in Your Head!” received the Theodor Seuss Geisel Award for “the most distinguished book for beginning readers.”

The awards were announced by the American Library Assn.