The Michael L. Printz Award recognizes a novel that exemplifies literary excellence in young adult literature. The award is named for former school librarian Mike Printz who was an active member of YALSA and served on both the Best Books for Young Adults and the Margaret A. Edwards Award Committees. Mike Printz believed in the importance of “[f]inding the right book for the right student at the right time” (American Library Association, 2011) and saw the potential in connecting with young adult authors, like Chris Crutcher, who participated in Printz’s author-in-residence program. Michael Printz passed away in 1996, after retiring from teaching in 1994. The Michael L. Printz Award is given annually to a novel that “exemplifies literary excellence in young adult literature” (American Library Association, 2011).
The 2011 winner of the Michael L. Printz Award is Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi. This dystopian novel is set in the Gulf Coast in the distant future. The protagonist, Nailer, a young teen, small in stature, works the light crew scavenging copper wire from ancient oil tankers. Nailer’s mother is dead, and he lives with his father Richard Lopez, an abusive drug addict, in a hut on the beach. The closest thing Nailer has to family is his “boss girl,” Pima, and her mother Shadna, a heavy crew worker. Nailer, like everyone on Bright Sands Beach, dreams of finding a “lucky strike,” a find that will make him rich and take them away from the grueling work of the scavenge crews. Nailer knows his time on the crews is short: the bigger he grows, the less time he has left on the light crew, but his size and strength will never be enough to earn him a place on the heavy crews and secure his future. Nailer dreams of a life working on one of the clipper ships that speed, and sometime fly, across the ocean. The clipper ships are owned by “swanks,” the rich business owners who purchase the oil, copper, and other scavenge lifted from the tankers by the crews. It is a life Nailer can hardly imagine. When Pima and Nailer find a clipper wrecked by a city killer hurricane, they believe it may be their “lucky strike,” if only that can keep it a secret and carry the valuable scavenge away. Their plan becomes complicated when a young swank they believed to be dead turns out to be the only survivor of the wreck. Nita, or Lucky Girl, claims to be the daughter of a powerful business man and promises Pima and Nailer a great reward if they help her evade her father’s ememies and find her way home. The situation is further complicated, though, when Nailer’s father finds the clipper and takes the three teens captive. Richard Lopez soon makes plans to sell Nita to her father’s enemies for a substantial profit. Nailer must decide whether to side with his father and save himself or risk his life to save the girl.
Ship Breaker is certainly deserving of the Michael L. Printz Award. The story is captivating and suspenseful, and young adults will identify, and hopefully learn from, the tough moral decisions Nailer and many of the other characters in the novel face. Many teens will also identify with the difficulty of Nailer’s family situation and his dream of a better life. The book would be a valuable addition to a school library media center simply for its ability to capture the young adult audience, but teachers, particularly in science and social studies, could also use the novel to promote discussion about a number of pertinent and timely topics ranging from water and air pollution to the use of oil and other fuels to global warming and changes in weather patterns caused by human misuse of the environment. Discussion of the possibility of the future presented in Ship Breaker coming to fruition would be powerful in any classroom. The novel could also parallel a study of child labor and job safety during the Industrial Revolution.
References
American Library Association. (2011). Michael L. Printz award.
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Bacigalupi, P. (2010). Ship breaker. New York: Little, Brown and Company.
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