Pyrite/Fool’s Gold from Wikipedia

Last week, we opened the polls for one of our favorite things to do around here: vote for the Pyrite Winner! (Get it? Pyrite? Like not-quite-gold? Because while we read, discuss, and overall mimic RealCommittee’s work, we aren’t RealCommittee? So our medal is sort of an imitation gold sticker? That is in no way a sticker?) And now, a week later, we have a winner!

And, with great relief, I want to tell you that it went differently from last year; we have a clear-cut, easy to call winner (last year we had to go through…how many rounds of voting because things were so close? Two rounds? There was a lot of voting last year, is what I’m saying.)

But we made it through, and after the jump, we’ll get to, you know, THE TITLE THAT WON, and all the delicious numbers and charts and behind-the-scenes breakdown that (some of us) live for.

*drum roll drum roll/intense close up on me as I prepare to hand out our Pyrite Rose.* 

Our 2018 Pyrite winner is The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas!!

This debut title was our clear winner with the most first place votes — 48 points in total. Want to see what that looks like? (If you want to drink in the details, click to embiggen!)

Long Way Down came in as a strong second; it actually garnered more votes, but fewer first place votes, and its total stands at 40. Check it out, below:

We had a lot of other titles with love, but those two were the clear cut leaders. For a sense of the field overall, here’s yet another lovely graph. Again, feel free to click on the chart to get the details. I’m curious what this will mean for our honor vote — once we get Long Way Down on the slate, the other three spots could go to anyone! Surely you don’t think one wrenching decision is all we’ll ask of you? We have more roses to hand out, people! More roses!

What do you think of our vote? Comments are open, below. And of course, you can keep this Pyrite process going with an honor vote; we’ll get that vote rolling in the next day or so, so you have a little time to really examine these results and think about how to strategically vote for up to four honor books.

The Pyrite is a mock Printz, done in good fun and with an eye towards shadowing, in some small way, the kind of reading and discussion the RealCommittee participates in. We are not affiliated with the actual Printz, although we think it rocks, which is why we do this. The RealPrintz is formally YALSA‘s Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature and is sponsored annually by Booklist.