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To the rest of the world she is the author of critically acclaimed books for children and young adults, a passionate promoter of diversity and cultural sensitivity in children’s and young adult books and now a Newbery Award winner.

In this country she is not nearly as well-known as she ought to be, and even in her own — although she has won both the Booker Prize and the Carnegie Medal for children’s literature, the equivalent of our Newbery award — she is not as big a name as, say, her contemporaries Margaret Drabble or A. S. Byatt.

The Newbery award comes after her book was a New York Times bestseller; movie rights were sold in the fall to Fox Animation.

That was the day he received a call from the Newbery Award selection committee informing him that he'd won the most prestigious honor in children's literature for his novel about life and basketball, "The Crossover."

Last week, Matt de la Peña became the first Latino author to win the Newbery Award, the most prestigious prize in American children’s literature.