Barnes & Noble has announced the six finalists for the 2011 Discover Great New Writers Awards. The winners in each category, fiction and nonfiction, receive a $10,000 prize and a full year of additional promotion from Barnes & Noble.

The ABA will select 450 bookstores around the U.S. focused on literary fiction to receive tabletop displays, posters and shelf talkers for the seven shortlisted novels.

Last Monday, the American Library Association announced its annual Youth Media Awards at its Midwinter conference, held this year in Dallas. The 2012 John Newbery Medal went to author Jack Gantos for Dead End in Norvelt (FSG), a semiautobiographical story set in the town of Norvelt, Pa. The Randolph Caldecott Medal went to Chris Raschka for A Ball for Daisy (Random House/Schwartz & Wade), a wordless picture book about a dog and its beloved red ball. And the Michael L. Printz Award was given to first-time author John Corey Whaley for Where Things Come Back (S&S/Atheneum), about the disappearance of a teenager and the possible reappearance of an extinct woodpecker; Whaley also won the William C. Morris Debut Author Award.

Three lucky authors got phone calls from the Newbery, Caldecott, and Printz committees, letting each of them know they had won the top prize.

Jack Gantos has won the 2012 Newbery Medal for Dead End in Norvelt, Chris Raschka has won the 2012 Randolph Caldecott Medal for A Ball for Daisy, and John Corey Whaley has won the 2011 Michael L. Printz Award for Where Things Come Back.

At a gala event at Artists Space in downtown New York, the NBCC announced its finalists for awards for 2011 books in six categories, along with winners of two honorary citations. Click to read our reviews of all of the finalist books.

Mystery Writers of America has announced the nominees for the 2012 Edgar Allan Poe Awards, honoring the best in mystery fiction and nonfiction. The winners will be announced at a gala banquet on April 26 in New York.

The finalists for this year's Story Prize are The Angel Esmeralda by Don DeLillo (Scribner), We Others by Steven Millhauser (Knopf), and Binocular Vision by Edith Pearlman (Lookout Books).

As a kid growing up in Harlem, Walter Dean Myers admits he often led with his fists and struggled academically before dropping out of high school at 17 to join the army. But in the decades since, he's proved to be a master at using words to make his case — a skill that will be in high demand as he becomes the nation's third Ambassador for Young People's Literature. He succeeds Katherine Paterson, who has served since 2010.

Alison Lester and Boori Pryor have been named Australia's first-ever Children's Laureates. They will travel to every state and territory in the country during their two-year terms, “to inspire as many children to read as possible.”