The Florida Book Awards

I’ve never won an actual medal before, though I did earn quite few Girl Scout badges some time ago. Last week my husband Andy and I attended the Florida Book Awards banquet and award ceremony because Missing Math: A Number Mystery won a bronze medal in the Children’s Literature division. There was a nice variety of books from fiction to poetry to mystery to nonfiction about Florida in the eight categories.

We met silver medal winner Donna Gephart, the author of As If Being 12 ¾ Isn’t Bad Enough, My Mother Is Running for President! This post on her blog Wild About Words has several photos taken at the event. It was great fun to hear the behind-the-scenes saga of how her book came to be published... as is often the case, it wasn’t easy. She mentioned that since the book’s publication she has heard from several luminaries in the political sphere, including Hillary Clinton.

It may not be obvious in the photo, but the bronze medal is actually copper-colored. And the gold medals were... bronze(!) The gold medals had been awarded previously in a ceremony with Governor Crist. John Tkac (Whispers from the Bay) had been asked by a child, “Why isn’t your gold medal gold?” So he went out and had it gold-plated! For a mere $50, apparently. It absolutely gleamed. So on the night of the banquet, the other gold medal winners were wondering what was wrong with their medals.

Another fun bit of news is that a set of the FBA books will be housed on a bookshelf in the Governor’s outer office, then next year will be moved to the mansion for permanent display.

The 2009 awards will be featured in Forum, a magazine produced by the Florida Humanities Council. If you’re a first time subscriber, a free one-year subscription is available here. Order by May 15th to get the issue with the FBA authors and books.