Ladybug Picture Book Award 2025 Longlist

Since mid-December we have collected potential nominations from NH librarians for the 2025 Ladybug Picture Book Award and are now ready to gather votes from NH's librarians on which of the 73 titles suggested belong on the final list of nominees for this year's award. If you work in a public or school library in NH you are invited to vote on the nominees.

Before you vote you will want to review the long list of suggested titles and decide on your selections. You can vote for up to 5 titles from the long list. There will be a second round of voting when this round closes. The top vote-getters from this survey will be put up to another vote by the NH library community to select the very best choices for our list.

Starting Monday, 1/20/25 and the next 14 weekdays after, we will be posting groups of the long list nominees for your consideration. These are sets of books grouped by theme to help you consider all the books in more manageable batches. The topics are, in many cases, only one aspect of what the book is "about" and many books could have gone into multiple topics, but we wanted to provide "bite-sized pieces" of the rather long long list and these themes let us group the titles so that no post has too many books in it.

PLEASE NOTE that you can only vote once from your device (phone, computer, whatever you use to browse the web) so don't go to the survey to see your choices, do that from the long list, as you will not be able to go back again to vote.

Once you have reviewed the options and made your choices you will cast your vote online. 

You may vote between now and Sunday, February 23, 2025. 

We expect to announce the second round of nominee voting here on the blog in early March.

Dublin Longlist 2025

The Dublin Literary Award 2025 Longlist featuring 71 books nominated by 83 libraries (including NHSL) from 34 countries around the world has been announced. 

The shortlist will be announced on March 25, 2025 and the winning book on May 22, 2025.

Book of the Week (1/13/2025)

Everyone's Trash: One Man Against 1.6 Billion Pounds by Duncan Watson (Peter E. Randall Publisher, 2024) 

Each day, every single person in the United States, all 324 million, discards about five pounds of waste. Be it a bottle that gets placed in a recycling bin or a piece of paper crumpled and tossed into the waste bin, every bit of the daily 1.6 billion pounds cast-off has a story. This book is full of those stories. It will wake you up and give you hope. As the author, Duncan Watson, says, “More people in America recycle than vote. Recycling is more popular than Democracy!”

Watson has been running the City of Keene’s solid waste program for 33 years. He has brought national attention to the program for solid waste disposal that Keene, NH, has built. He spins a good yarn, and the rich characters who populate the “dump” in Keene, New Hampshire, provide endless entertainment and a lot of laughs. --Publisher's blurb

About the author:

Duncan Watson began his personal trash journey in his pre-teens as an attendant at a small municipal recycling center in Northern California. After a brief stint as a child voice actor for Charlie Brown, he spent several years wandering the desert looking for a better paying gig. He ended up in New Hampshire and has spent the last 32 years (and counting) working for the City of Keene Public Works Department, including running the City’s solid waste program. Always a storyteller, he continues to explore the possibility of transforming the dump culture to provide a vision of something bigger, something worthy. Duncan has an MS in Resource Management from Antioch New England University.

Book of the Week (1/6/2025)

Grappone Automotive: The Founding by Amanda Grappone Osmer (Grappone Automotive, 2024)

In the hill country of southern Italy in the late 1800s, two families - the Grappones and D'Orlandos - were eking out an existence as their ancestors had for generations. One, tied to the land, farmed in the heat of the sun and under the oppression of a newly formed government. The other cut and carved stone, passing the skill of masonry down through the centuries. Both endured grinding poverty and rampant disease, and ultimately looked to America for a better life. This is the story of two immigrants, Rocco Grappone and Emanuela D'Orlando, who raised a family and purchased a small filling station as the automobile craze swept through New Hampshire in the 1920s. --Publisher's blurb

About the author:

Amanda Grappone Osmer is the last Grappone family member working in the daily operation of Grappone Automotive Group in its 100th year of business. She and her husband have three children and enjoy hosting international exchange students. The family includes a dog and a revolving cast of backyard livestock and poultry. Amanda deeply loves New Hampshire's natural beauty, and in 2018 she co-founded a nature-based preschool to help share that love with some of her state's youngest citizens.

Join Amanda at Gibson's Bookstore on January 21, 2025 at 6:30 pm where she will be discussing her book!