The Hurston/Wright Foundation announced the winners of its 2005 Hurston/Wright Legacy Awards on Tuesday, November 1, 2005.

Winners in the four categories are:

Fiction
Maryse Condé – Who Slashed Celanire’s Throat

Debut Fiction
Chris Abani – GraceLand

Nonfiction
Alexis De Veaux – Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde

Contemporary Fiction
Tracy Price-Thompson – A Woman’s Worth (this will be ordered November 15, 2005)

The mission of the Foundation, founded in 1990 by novelist Marita Golden, is “…to develop, nurture and sustain the world community of writers of African descent.” Named after two giants of literature, Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright, the Legacy Awards are in their 6th year and have honored such esteemed authors as Mat Johnson, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Wil Haygood.

Please, enough with the ponchos already. It seems every time I browse the library's knitting patterns, I come upon an item that makes me wonder, "What were they thinking?!"

It turns out I'm not alone in my feeling that certain sweaters should never see the light of day. You Knit What??is the funniest knitting blog I've chanced upon in a long time.

And for the fictionally inclined, Knit One, Kill Two is the beginning of a new mystery series by Maggie Sefton.

Ever wonder what's in your meat or where it comes from? Read Mad Cowboy : Plain Truth from the Cattle Rancher Who Won't Eat Meat, by Howard F. Lyman with Glen Merzer and find out!

Amazon.com says: "Persuasive, straightforward, and full of the down-home good humor and optimism of a son of the soil, Mad Cowboy is both an inspirational story of personal transformation and a convincing call to action for a plant-based diet -- for the good of the planet and the health of us all."

Scientists have discovered that mice sing in the presence of mates. Other animals that sing to attract mates are birds, whales, and frogs. Visit these books and others to introduce your child to musical animals today!

Today on Talk of the Nation guests discussed Wal-Mart's recent efforts to improve its public image in the wake of criticism over treatment of workers and an apparently scathing new documentary titled Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price (on order). While you're waiting for the new DVD, you may want to try the 2004 PBS Frontline title Is Wal-mart Good for America?, left.

Founded by Jack Rabinovitch in 1994 to honor the memory of his late wife Doris, The Giller Prize is dedicated to celebrating the best in Canadian fiction each year.

Past winners include Alice Munro (2004) and Michael Ondaatje (2000).

This year's finalists are:

Luck by Joan Barfoot
The Time In Between by David Bergen
Sweetness in the Belly by Camilla Gibb
Alligator by Lisa Moore
A Wall of Light by Edeet Ravel

The winner will be announced on November 8th. I expect U.S. publishers are already scrambling for the rights.

What is it that the more you take away the larger it becomes? What has a bottom at the top? What is it you will break, even when you name it? If you want an answer to these riddles and many more, plus riddling stories to bend your mind, take a look. Riddle Me This! Riddles and Stories to Challenge Your Mind by Hugh Lupton is full of surprises and watch out, it might even make you think about the world in new ways.

The Michigan Library Association's Children's Services Division has announced the winner of the 2004 Mitten Award. This award is for the best children's book published during a calendar year as decided by a committee of youth services librarians from all over the state.

The 2004 winner is Ida B:--And Her Plans to Maximize Fun, Avoid Disaster, and (Possibly) Save the World by Katherine Hannigan. Two Honor Books were also chosen: The Young Man and the Sea by Rodman Philbrick and Knuffle Bunny by Mo Willems.

After 15 years, pre-production is finally under way for a Hollywood version of Maurice Sendak's 1963 children's classic Where the Wild Things Are. Sendak, now 77, will serve as producer on the film, with Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation) directing a screenplay he's co-written with Dave Eggers (A Heart-breaking Work of Staggering Genius). "I don't know what to make of it, exactly," Sendak is quoted as saying in The New York Times, (10/23/05) "but I am so for it. I am in love with it. If Spike and Dave do not do this movie, now, I would just as soon not see any version of it ever get made."

Also coming soon, another adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, this time starring Keira Knightley. Surprisingly, this is only the second big screen version of the novel by Jane Austen (the first being the 1940 Hollywood classic starring Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier), but the Library owns both the 1985 BBC version and the wildly popular 1995 BBC miniseries, left, starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth. P&P was also the source for the 2004 Bollywood musical Bride and Prejudice.