First awarded 2008 | ||
Presented by Association for Library Service to Children and Young Adult Library Services Association, divisions of ALA Official website ala.org/alsc/awardsgrants/bookmedia/odysseyaward ala.org/yalsa/odyssey |
The Odyssey Award for Excellence in Audiobook Production is an annual award conferred by the American Library Association upon the publisher of "the best audiobook produced for children and/or young adults, available in English in the United States". It is jointly administered by two ALA divisions (Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) and Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA)) and sponsored by Booklist magazine. It recognizes production quality in all respects, considering such things as narration, sound quality, background music and sound effects. It is named for Homer's eighth century BCE epic poem Odyssey, which was transmitted orally, to remind us modern people of the ancient roots of storytelling.
Contents
The award was inaugurated in 2008.
For many reasons indicated in the 2008 manifesto, "it is essential for ALSC and YALSA to provide the same level of support for this nonprint format that they have historically provided for print materials, by creating an annual award for the best audiobooks in the field."
Latest rendition
Brilliance Audio, a subsidiary of Amazon since 2007, won the sixth annual Odyssey Award for The Fault in Our Stars, written by John Green and narrated by Kate Rudd. The award was announced and presented during the ALA midwinter meeting, January 28, 2013. It was judged by a panel of eleven ALA members.
Criteria
Source: "Eligibility & Criteria"
Recipients
In each of the six cycles to 2013, three to five runners-up have been dubbed Honor Audiobooks. Although full cast narration is eligible, two of the winners and runners-up have featured two narrators, all others a single narrator.
Multiple awards
Listening Library and Live Oak Media have won two awards each.
Listening Library, an imprint of Random House, has produced 11 of the 30 winners and runners-up while Brilliance Audio of Amazon has produced six.
Katherine Kellgren is the narrator of five Honor Audiobooks, including three written by L. A. Meyer and produced by Listen & Live Audio — the first, second, and fourth Jacky Faber books.
Sherman Alexie, author and narrator of the 2009 Odyssey Award-winning audiobook, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, also won the annual National Book Award for Young People's Literature for the print edition of that book (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, September 2007).