Prizewinning Books for Kids
Last updated: September 18, 2024
So many books are being published for children and young adults all the time, and the ones given the most publicity are not always the best. If you don't have much time to browse or read reviews, picking prizewinning kids' books tends to be a safe bet.
At Five Books, we like to keep track of prizewinning books for kids as a way of drawing attention to quality reading material. These are books picked by judging panels of librarians and other specialists who do the quality checking for you. In general, prizewinning books for kids and young adults will be enjoyable, but educational or stimulating as well.
Below, you will find some of the recent winners of prestigious prizes for books for children and young adults (such as American Library Association awards in the US, and the Yoto Carnegie Medals in the UK) in various categories, in both print and audio.
Am I Made of Stardust?
Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock, Chelen Écija (illustrator)
🏆 Winner of the 2023 Royal Society Young People’s Book Prize
“This is a lovely book. One of the Royal Society people who is in this field and does outreach was saying these are exactly the kind of questions children ask him all the time. It has really good detail, with good experiments in it. Again, it’s intended for children in the 8-11 age range…the judging panel felt that it was a well-judged book with very rich content.” Read more...
The Best Science Books for Children: the 2023 Royal Society Young People’s Book Prize
Usha Goswami, Psychologist
Promise Boys
by Nick Brooks
🏆 2024 Odyssey Award: Best Audiobook for Young Adults
YA thriller in which a prestigious school in Washington, D.C., turns out to have dangerous secrets. When the principal is murdered, three teenage boys become the prime suspects. Can they track down the real killer and clear their names before they get arrested?
Houses with a Story
by Seiji Yoshida & translated by Jan Mitsuko Cash
🏆 2024 Mildred L. Batchelder Award for outstanding children’s book translated into English
Subtitled A Dragon's Den, a Ghostly Mansion, a Library of Lost Books, and 30 More Amazing Places to Explore, this is an intriguing book that invites readers to explore some unique houses and their contents, and to meet the inhabitants. From an abandoned subway to a lighthouse, from a dragon tamer’s post office to the hideout of a timid ogre, each place can be a source of inspiration for readers to spin their own stories. By an illustrator with a background in anime and video game art, this book will appeal across quite a wide age range.
The Collectors: Stories
by A.S. King
🏆 Winner 2024 Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature
Why do we collect things? Exploring this question, author A. S. King challenged nine of her favourite writers of YA literature to contribute a short story that celebrates the weird. The result is this eclectic collection of stories (including one from King herself), each featuring a collection and its collector. This is the first time an anthology has won the Printz Award.
The Skull
Jon Klassen, Fairuza Balk (narrator)
🏆 2024 Audie Awards Best Audiobook for Young Listeners
“Jon Klassen does excel at that sort of little bit creepy or a little bit dangerous story. In this version, there’s a little girl named Otilla who’s fleeing into the forest. She is running away from a scary voice and comes to a castle where she meets a skull and becomes friends with the skull. Then she discovers that a scary skeleton is coming and trying to get the skull, so she has to defend her new friend. The narrator, Fairuza Balk, has a great voice for this story. She can shift between the youthful voice of Otilla, the girl, and the more dignified voice of the skull, and then the scarier voices that we hear in the background. It makes for an almost cozy scary story…” Read more...
The Best Audiobooks for Kids of 2023
Emily Connelly, Journalist
Big
by Vashti Harrison
🏆 Winner 2024 Caldecott Medal
The girl in this picture book grows up with a positive outlook on life until comments about her size gradually chip away her self-image. The sparse text succinctly demonstrates the impact of thoughtless comments, how being told she is too big makes her feel small, how she feels judged yet invisible. The illustrations play with perspective, expressing the girl’s changing perception of herself as she responds to fat-shaming, and later when she manages to love herself again.
The Eyes & The Impossible
by Dave Eggers & Shawn Harris (illustrator)
🏆 Winner 2024 Newbery Medal
A story of friendship, beauty and freedom exuberantly narrated by a dog called Johannes. The pictures are composed of existing fine art landscapes into which the illustrator has seamlessly inserted the dog protagonist. The edition with the decorative wooden cover is very attractive.
El Deafo
by Cece Bell
🏆 Winner 2024 Odyssey Award: Best Audiobook for Children
A graphic novel memoir about the author’s experiences of going to school in the 1970s wearing a huge hearing aid strapped to her chest. When she realises that the Phonic Ear enables her to hear her teacher not just in the classroom but anywhere in the school (including things she should not be hearing), she redefines herself as a superhero: El Deafo. But will being a superhero help her find what she really wants, a good friend?
The Fire, The Water, and Maudie McGinn
by Sally J. Pla
🏆 Winner 2024 Schneider Family Book Award for Middle Grade
Maudie, who is autistic, lives for summer holidays with her father in the mountain cabin he has built, but this year they are forced by wildfire to evacuate to a beach town. There, Maudie is drawn to surfing but scared to try. Burdened by secrets and her mother’s expectations, can she overcome her fears and transform her sense of self-worth?
Only This Beautiful Moment
by Abdi Nazemian
🏆 2024 Stonewall Young Adult Book Award Winner
An intergenerational story set in Tehran and Los Angeles in 2019, 1978 and 1939, exploring family secrets, the fragile bonds between fathers and sons, and the beautiful moments that shape us.
Burn Down, Rise Up
by Vincent Tirado
🏆 2023 Pura Belpré Award Young Adult Winner
The Bronx is being plagued by unexplained disappearances. When Raquel’s mother comes down with a mysterious illness, Raquel realises that it is somehow linked to the recent disappearance of Cisco, beloved cousin of her crush Charlize. Together with Charlize and her friend Aaron, Raquel discovers that everything is tied to a challenge called the Echo Game, said to trap people in a particularly dark chapter of their city’s history. To have a chance of saving their loved ones, the 16 year olds have to play the terrifying game and defeat the evil at its heart, or die trying. A compelling paranormal thriller set in an underground cursed version of the Bronx. Beware it’s quite gory at times. Something fun: on their website the author has put links to the book characters’ playlists.
The Blue Book of Nebo
Manon Steffan Ros, author and translator
🏆 Winner of the 2023 Yoto Carnegie Medal
A post-apocalyptic short novel alternately narrated by a 14 year old boy and his mother. They are isolated survivors of a nuclear disaster, living outside a small village in North Wales where they grow what they eat and forage for other essentials — such as books — in abandoned homes. Simultaneously delicate and brutal, this is a contemplative read that makes us examine our lives in the modern world and what we really care about. The English edition is also an exploration of Welsh identity and our relationship with language.
Demon in the Wood
Leigh Bardugo, Dani Pendergast (illustrator)
🏆 2023 Audie Awards Best Audiobook for Young Adults
A graphic novel adaptation of the short story from 2015, subtitled “A Darkling Prequel Story”, part of the bestselling series that started with Shadow and Bone. This is a quick read for anyone who enjoys graphic novels, and who either would like to dip a toe into the Grishaverse or who is invested in the series and wants a glimpse of the backstory of Aleksander. In this book he is a lonely boy travelling with his mother, trying to train his extraordinary powers and find a safe haven in a dangerous, northern world.
I Must Betray You
by Ruta Sepetys
***2023 Yoto Carnegie Shadowers’ Choice Medal***
A gripping historical novel set in Bucharest in 1989. With hindsight readers know that the Ceaușescu regime will fall by Christmas, but at the start of the book Cristian — a 17 year old schoolboy — is blackmailed to become one of the many civilian informers for the regime. The author clearly takes her background research seriously, using interviews to get a feel for the human story in addition to a very wide range of written sources. I Must Betray You vividly brings to life the atmosphere of constant suspicion and fear, what it is like to grow up without any private space to be yourself, and the damage that the inability to trust anyone does to friendships and family relationships.
Victory. Stand! Raising My Fist for Justice
Tommie Smith, Derrick Barnes, Dawud Anyabwile (illustrator)
🏆 Winner 2023 YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults
This is a powerful graphic memoir, propelled by the great combination of a compelling story and dynamic illustrations by an award-winning artist. At the 1968 Olympics, Tommie Smith — having just broken the 200 metre sprint world record — and bronze medal winner John Carlos, raised their fists in an iconic gesture against the injustice inflicted on African Americans. This graphic novel tells the story of that race and the incredible determination it took to win, with flashbacks to Tommie Smith’s childhood. The Olympic medallists’ decision to use their platform to take a stand had severe consequences (including death threats) and still resonates today.
When the Angels Left the Old Country
by Sacha Lamb
***2023 Stonewall Young Adult Book Award Winner***
***2023 Michael L. Printz Honor Book (for Young Adult Literature)***
In a small shtetl in Poland in the early 20th century, an angel and a demon are studying the Talmud together. With opposing roles in the cosmic order but an intimate personal relationship, they embark on a quest to find out what happened to a local girl who has gone missing on the way to the USA. On the journey they meet Rose, whose best friend — the love of her life — has abandoned her to marry a man. An engaging novel with elements of Yiddish literature and folklore and concerned with early 20th century Ashkenazi immigration history, it is also about queer love and the fluid nature of identity, and about what is good and what is wicked.
Seen and Unseen: What Dorothea Lange, Toyo Miyatake, and Ansel Adams’s Photographs Reveal about the Japanese American Incarceration
by Elizabeth Partridge & Lauren Tamaki (illustrator)
🏆 2023 Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal
🏆 BolognaRagazzi Award: Photography – 2023 Special Category
After the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, over 125,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans were incarcerated in camps. Three photographers set out to document life at the Manzanar concentration camp in the California desert. This book vividly brings history to life by weaving the photos together with atmospheric illustrations and simple text. Given the different styles of the photographs, this book is also a brilliant resource for teaching children to think about and evaluate primary sources.
Ages 10-14
Listen: How Evelyn Glennie, a Deaf Girl, Changed Percussion
Shannon Stocker, Devon Holzwarth (illustrator)
🏆 Winner 2023 Schneider Family Book Award for young children
This is a picture book story of the inspiring life of Evelyn Glennie, who started to go deaf from the age of 10. Instead of giving up on her love of music, she switched instruments from piano and clarinet to percussion, going on to become the world’s first full-time solo percussionist and winning Grammy Awards for her recordings. Having pushed the boundaries of percussion and access to music education, Dame Evelyn has also established a charitable foundation to Teach the World to Listen. Holzwarth’s pictures are clearly intended to illustrate that we can feel sound, that touch is another way of interpreting vibrating air.
Ages 3-6
Just a Girl: A True Story of World War II
Lia Levi, Jess Mason (illustrator), translated by Sylvia Notini
🏆 2023 Mildred L. Batchelder Award for outstanding children’s book translated into English
Six year old Lia has spent the summer of 1938 with her family at the seaside. To her, being Jewish means going to synagogue some Saturdays, lighting candles, getting presents for Hanukkah, and not eating bread at Passover. Why does it suddenly mean she is not allowed to go back to school? The young Lia is a perceptive and resilient narrator of her experiences as she is uprooted by fascism and war from her family life in Turin and sent to hide in a convent. This is an adaptation for children of Levi’s award-winning memoir published in 1994.
Ages 7-11
Hot Dog
by Doug Salati
🏆 2023 Caldecott Medal Winner
A dog is overwhelmed by the heat and noise of summer in the city. The loving owner understands, and they go to spend a fabulous day on an island beach. When they come back to the city in the evening things have cooled and calmed down. This picture book has sparse text; young readers will notice plenty to talk about in the colourful, detailed illustrations.
Ages 3-6
Freewater
by Amina Luqman-Dawson
🏆 2023 Newbery Medal Winner
Loosely based on maroon communities of escaped slaves and their descendants, this is an exciting novel of courage and resistance. With plantation overseers and their dogs hot on the trail, 12 year old Homer and his younger sister Ada flee into the swamp of the American South where they join a secret community named Freewater. Adventure inspired by history.
Ages 9-12
All My Rage
Sabaa Tahir, narrated by Deepti Gupta, Kamran R. Khan and Kausar Mohammed
🏆 Winner 2023 Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature
***2022 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature (USA)***
***American Library Association Amazing Audiobook for Young Adults 2023***
“Of the three different characters, two are best friends who are in a difficult spot with each other. And the third is the mother, whose voice is telling her story in the past leading up to the present. It gets into some heavier topics, where the three of them are facing a lot of hardship. At the same time, there are beautiful relationships that you’re discovering. While there’s a lot of anger and grief, there’s also a lot of joy that’s found.” Read more...
The Best Audiobooks for Kids of 2022
Emily Connelly, Journalist
Stuntboy, In the Meantime
Jason Reynolds, Raúl the Third (illustrator), Guy Lockard (narrator)
***2023 Odyssey Award: Best Audiobook for Children***
***2023 Audie Awards: Best Audiobook for Middle Grade***
“Stuntboy is a very dynamic and fun audiobook, and Jason Reynolds is a celebrated children’s author, for good reason. He has done it again, written a story that’s very good at meeting kids where they are…..I’d say for reluctant readers or for kids who haven’t seen themselves in children’s literature before, or for kids who are looking for a fun story, this is great. And the audiobook is a whole other amazing experience, narrated by a full cast. “ Read more...
The Best Audiobooks for Kids of 2021
Emily Connelly, Journalist
The Midnight Fair
by Gideon Sterer & Mariachiara Di Giorgio (illustrator)
***2022 Yoto Kate Greenaway Medal Shadowers’ Choice Award***
A funfair is being set up at the edge of a forest. Intrigued, wild animals quietly watch from inside the dark woods. When the lights are turned off for the night and people leave, the animals switch them back on and start their own party. The illustrator plays wonderfully with shadow and brightness, and the colour flow recreates the movement of the lights in the night. The perspective of looking on from outside evokes a world that continues beyond the confines of the page. This is a wordless picture book, perfect for children who like to tell the story in their own words.
Ages 3-7
If the World Were 100 People
Jackie McCann, Aaron Cushley (illustrator)
***Winner of the 2022 Royal Society Young People’s Books Prize***
“It’s about percentages, it’s about showing the spread of characteristics across the world. It’s picking up interesting points, and it raises a lot of points that can be built on and explored. You don’t have to read the book, you can open it at a single page and form a lesson from it or form a discussion from it, be it at the dinner table at home or in the school room.” Read more...
Best Science Books for Children: the 2022 Royal Society Young People’s Book Prize
Alan Wilson, Scientist
Be Dazzled
by Ryan La Sala
***2022 Audie Awards Best Audiobook for Young Adults***
Raffy pours all his dreams and effort into his hobby: designing and crafting costumes based on anime and game characters. He is ready to participate in the world of competitive cosplay, but there is a complicating factor: his ex-boyfriend, Luca. Both boys are keeping their creative arts and crafts secret from their families; Raffy because his art gallerist mother looks down on it, Luca because his parents think boys should stick to soccer. Alternate chapters of the novel sensitively trace the development of their relationship and breakup. In the present, as the competition gets underway, can Raffy learn to be a team player, and can broken hearts be put back together?
October, October
Katya Balen, Angela Harding (illustrator)
***Winner of the 2022 Yoto Carnegie Medal***
The reader quickly feels close to October, the quirky 11 year old narrator who lives off-grid with her father. October loves to find objects in the woods and imagine their stories, until one day her world is turned upside down and she is forced to move to London. There, she discovers mudlarking: searching for objects in the Thames riverbed when the tide is out. October, October is a lyrical novel alive with the beauty of the natural world, and of relationships given the chance to heal.
Ages 8-12
Ambushed! The Assassination Plot against President Garfield
by Gail Jarrow
***Winner 2022 YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults***
This is a book about the assassination plot against President James Garfield. But more than that, it is a fascinating – if gory – read for anyone interested in the history of medicine, with a focus on 19th century USA. Garfield wrote to his wife during the Civil War that the fight with disease “is infinitely more horrible than battle”. When Garfield was shot it need not have been fatal; indeed it took over two months for him to die. This book is a powerful reminder that we need to take antibiotic resistance seriously. Similarly, today we are seeing a rise in cases of illnesses such as diphtheria, polio and whooping cough, and this book helps us reflect on what it was like to live without vaccines against them (the Garfields lost a daughter to diphtheria and a son to whooping cough). Ambushed! is part of a series about medical fiascoes.
The Words in My Hands
by Asphyxia
***Winner 2022 Schneider Family Book Award for teens***
Deaf 16-year-old Piper is trying to figure out how to survive in a near-future Australia in chaos due to high inflation and fuel shortages. Learning to sign opens Piper’s world (until now she has been expected to fit in by lipreading and speaking) but complicates her relationship with her mother. Exploring how best to respond in a hearing world as she develops her identity, Piper expresses herself in a mixed media art journal. The result is this unique book, which was first published in Australia as Future Girl.
Last Night at the Telegraph Club
by Malinda Lo
***American Library Association Amazing Audiobook for Young Adults 2022***
***2022 Stonewall Young Adult Book Award Winner***
***2022 Michael L. Printz Honor Book (for Young Adult Literature)***
In 1950s San Francisco, 17 year old Lily is a Chinese American who dresses conservatively and does her homework. When she realises that there is such a thing as lesbian romantic love, she feels as if she has “finally cracked the last part of a code she had been puzzling over for so long that she couldn’t remember when she had started deciphering it”. A relationship develops with her classmate Kath who shares Lily’s interest in mathematics. But in the face of the police’s drive against so-called “sex deviates” and the country’s campaign against people who are suspected of communist sympathies (pretty much anyone in Chinatown), can it survive?
The People's Painter: How Ben Shahn Fought for Justice with Art
by Cynthia Levinson & Evan Turk (illustrator)
***Winner 2022 Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal***
A picture book about the life and work of Benjamin Shahn (1898-1969), from his childhood in Lithuania as a Jew under Tsar Nicholas II to his life as a young immigrant and later an established artist in the United States. This book is very much about the process of being an artist, about knowing who you are in order to find out what kind of artist you are. Shahn used his art for social dialogue, insisting that the purpose was to communicate. Evan Turk effectively uses connected scenes, distorted shapes and symbolic forms to tell the visual part of the story.
Ages 4-7
Boogie Boogie, Y’all
by C. G. Esperanza
***2022 Odyssey Award: Best Audiobook for Children***
A picture book celebration of graffiti culture. Whilst the adults in the book either ignore or complain about the graffiti they see around them, kids notice the art and love it. The book has an infectious enthusiasm for urban culture and would be a great starting point for a discussion with children about life in art and art in life. The hip hop audiobook is narrated by the author/illustrator.
Ages 3-6
My City Speaks
Darren Lebeuf & Ashley Barron (illustrator)
***Winner 2022 Schneider Family Book Award for young children***
A visually impaired narrator describes the sounds, smells and tastes of the city on the way to a music recital in the park. The rhythmic, alliterative language and colourful textured collage illustrations will appeal to young children. An engaging picture book about the ways we experience the world, encouraging children to think about all the different senses.
Ages 2-6
When the Sky Falls
by Phil Earle
***British Book Awards 2022 – Children’s Fiction Winner***
Aged 12, Joseph still hasn’t learnt to read. Dyslexia is not widely understood, and being laughed at in school has made him angry. Loss has made him more furious still. While other children are being evacuated from London in 1941 he gets sent to London to be looked after by his grandmother’s gruff old friend, Mrs F, who runs a zoo. In Joseph’s experience, friendship and trust count for nothing, but gradually a special bond forms between the boy and Adonis, the zoo’s remaining gorilla. But what happens if Adonis’ cage is damaged by the bombs? A silverback on the loose during the blitz? Sometimes doing the right thing feels completely wrong.
Ages 8-12
The Last Cuentista
by Donna Barba Higuera
***Winner of the 2022 Newbery Medal**
Science fiction blended with Mexican folklore. If you leave Earth in the knowledge that you can never return, what will you want to take with you? 12 year old Petra Peña chooses her grandmother’s stories. But on board her spaceship a fanatical Collective is bent on creating a utopia by erasing everyone’s memories and purging those they are unable to reprogramme. If we make a new society by forgetting what we have left behind, will we know what it is to be human? A novel about the importance of remembering stories and passing them on, and of creating our own stories. Ages 10-14
Firekeeper's Daughter
by Angeline Boulley & Isabella Star LaBlanc (narrator)
***Winner 2022 Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature***
***American Library Association Amazing Audiobook for Young Adults 2022***
“It’s a great combination of a young adult thriller and a love story… It’s a story of a community, the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians on reservation in Michigan. The story takes place on and off the reservation. The main character, whose name is Daunis, has grown up between those two cultures. She gets caught up in an investigation into a new street drug that has very devastatingly been impacting their communities… There’s a lot about understanding yourself and your family as well. It’s an engrossing story.” Read more...
The Best Audiobooks for Kids of 2021
Emily Connelly, Journalist
Clap When You Land
by Elizabeth Acevedo
***2021 Audie Awards Best Audiobook for Young Adults***
This novel in verse by multi-award winning writer Acevedo is alternately narrated by two teenagers, Camino and Yahaira. Camino lives for the summers when her father visits her in the Dominican Republic. Yahaira lives in New York with her father. When their father dies in a plane crash they learn of each other for the first time. The story brims with both grief and love for their imperfect father, questions of identity, and an emerging sisterhood. Based on the crash in New York of Flight AA587 on its way to the Dominican Republic, this story is also an exploration of what it means to have tragedies that are both private and public.
The Good Hawk
by Joseph Elliott
***2021 Audie Awards Best Audiobook for Middle Grade***
The first book in the Shadow Skye series, this fast-paced novel is alternately narrated by Agatha, who probably has Down’s syndrome, and Jaime. When disaster strikes in the form of “deamhain” (demon Vikings), the two teenagers set out on a terrifying rescue mission from the Isle of Skye across a ravaged Scotia to Norveg. They don’t feel particularly brave, but they are their clan’s only hope, and they are aided by Agatha’s gift of communicating with animals. This gripping fantasy adventure has won the Audie Award in the middle grade (8-12) category. However, given the level of violence, it is probably better suited for readers in the 12-14 age range.
Small in the City
by Sydney Smith
***Winner of the 2021 Kate Greenaway medal***
This book is set in Toronto, but will resonate with kids in any snowy city. A child guides the reader along busy streets, past building sites and yards, down an alley, up a tree and past a bench… Gradually it is revealed that the narrator isn’t speaking to the reader so much as to a missing cat. The illustrations are tightly woven with the text, in a simple story expressing loneliness and worry, but also comfort and confidence.
Ages 4-6
I am a book. I am a portal to the universe.
by Stefanie Posavec & Miriam Quick (illustrator)
***Winner of the 2021 Royal Society Young People’s Books Prize***
“My very favourite of the books. In fact, I liked it so much that I bought fifteen copies and I’ve been giving them out to everyone…. I wasn’t the only one who loved this book. I think everyone was intrigued by it, because it’s so interactive. It’s a true and very creative art and science fusion.” Read more...
Best Science Books for Children: the 2021 Royal Society Young People’s Book Prize
Katharine Cashman, Scientist
Throwaway Girls
by Andrea Contos
***Winner of the International Thriller Writers' Awards best young adult novel 2021***
Caroline can’t wait to turn eighteen and finish school, to leave her conservative family who refuse to accept her sexual identity. She struggles with mental health problems and is trying to keep her head down, but when her best friend Madison disappears Caroline gets involved in the investigation. She soon discovers that Madison is not the only girl who has disappeared. This book raises important questions about inequality, entitlement and abuse of power, and how class differences are reflected in law enforcement outcomes.
Look Both Ways
by Jason Reynolds
***Winner of the 2021 Carnegie Medal***
A mixed collection of short stories, some of them very lovely, by The US National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. The stories are bound by a common thread: they all take place on the way home from school, in that space where children are unsupervised by teachers or parents. A myriad thoughts and words form along the city blocks that separate school and home, as relationships are built and events unfold on the children's separate but interconnected journeys.
Ages 8-10
Honeybee: The Busy Life of Apis Mellifera
by Candace Fleming & Eric Rohmann (illustrator)
***Winner 2021 Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal***
Honeybee: The Busy Life of Apis Mellifera is a scientific picture book about the short, busy life of the honeybee. It contains the usual facts that an information book should but also provides food for thought about how we all follow a similar cycle of life and death, and how much work really goes into a spoonful of honey. What lifts this book is the seamless interweaving of the text with the detailed, magnified oil painting illustrations.
Ages 4-8
Kent State
by Deborah Wiles
***2021 Odyssey Award: Best Audiobook for Young Adults***
Most of us know it happened: that during protests against the Vietnam War in the United States, at Kent State University on May 4th, 1970, the National Guard opened fire, killing four students and wounding more. What many of us don't know is exactly how and why it happened. Written in verse and a work of historical fiction, Kent State tells the story and answers those questions in the voices of people who were there.
Everything Sad Is Untrue (a true story)
by Daniel Nayeri
***Winner of the 2021 Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature***
Khosrou’s mother converts to Christianity, which leads her to flee Iran with her children in the middle of the night. Following an extended trip via an Italian refugee camp, Khosrou stands in front of his middle school class in Oklahoma explaining how he got there. Doing his best impression of Scheherazade, the legendary storyteller of 1001 Nights, he speaks of blood sacrifices, forbidden love and libraries in the desert. He is weaving memories to help define himself, but his classmates mainly perceive a boy whose lunch smells funny, who makes things up and talks too much about poop. Everything Sad Is Untrue is a true story in that it is autobiographical, but memories are unreliable, they are the stories we choose to tell ourselves. There is sadness (Khosrou - now known as Daniel - will never be able to make new memories with loved ones who are still in Iran) and there is hardship. At the same time, there is truth in the beauty of family tales in jasmine-scented Isfahan, of sensory memories, of food shared, of love and everyday survival.
When You Trap a Tiger
by Tae Keller
***Winner of the 2021 Newbery Medal***
“Long, long ago, when tiger walked like man…” Thus start the folktales which Halmoni (grandmother in Korean) has been telling Lily and her older sister since they were little girls. Now that Halmoni is ageing and Lily is coming of age, a magical tiger appears straight out of Lily’s favourite tale to strike a bargain: healing for Halmoni if she releases the history she has kept bottled up. A sparkling novel about the power of stories.
Ages 8-12
Overground Railroad
by Lesa Cline-Ransome, illustrated by James Ransome, narrated by Shayna Small and Dion Graham
***2021 Audie Awards Best Audiobook for Young Listeners***
“They’re beautiful pictures, and they really did such a marvellous job making a soundscape that goes along with it… It’s a piece of history that is great to explore with children.” Read more...
The Best Audiobooks for Kids of 2020
Emily Connelly, Journalist
King and the Dragonflies
by Kacen Callender, narrated by Ron Butler
***2020 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature (USA)***
Ages: 9 – 12
Narrator: Ron Butler
Audiobook length: 5 hours and 3 minutes
“In this story we’re in Louisiana with a young Black boy, who is grieving his older brother who had just died, suddenly. It’s a tough topic, certainly, but we’re in a year where so many people are experiencing such trauma. Ron Butler’s narration just brings these different characters off of the page and into your ears.” Read more...
The Best Audiobooks for Kids of 2020
Emily Connelly, Journalist
Cats React to Science Facts
by Izzi Howell
*** Winner of the 2020 Royal Society Young People’s Book Prize***
“This one is fascinating. It really captures, for example, why the Earth has a magnetic field. It explains force and energy balances, the idea of electromagnetism. It’s really, really good, well explained science. And you’ve got the added fun of cats in it! We wanted to try and have some books that might reach out to children who are maybe a bit intimidated by science or don’t think they’re very good at it, or perhaps just aren’t very interested in it. And we thought this book could do that: it would appeal to a much wider audience.” Read more...
The Best Science Books for Kids: the 2020 Royal Society Young People’s Book Prize
Mike Kendall, Scientist
Dig
by A.S. King
***Winner of the 2020 Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature***
The anxieties and individual stories of five teenage cousins are woven together as multigenerational secrets are revealed and an extended family implodes. Said the Printz Award Committee Chair: Dig “unapologetically explores the generational impacts of white privilege and the alienation of fractured families”.
Lark
by Anthony McGowan
***Winner of the 2020 Carnegie Medal***
Lark by Antony McGowan was the winner of the 2020 Carnegie Medal, the UK's most prestigious children's book prize. It's the fourth book about two brothers, Nicky and Kenny, but was described by the chair of the judges, Julia Hale, as a "standalone masterpiece". The book was published by Barrington Stoke, a publisher that focuses on kids with dyslexia or who find reading a bit tougher. More details are available here.
Hey, Kiddo
by Jarrett Krosoczka
***2020 Odyssey Award: Best Audiobook for Children and/or Young Adults***
***2020 Audie Awards Best Audiobook for Young Adults***
Hey Kiddo is a graphic memoir so you’d think it would be hard to turn into an audiobook. Instead, it’s won two major audiobook awards. The author, Jarrett Krosoczka, narrates the story himself, with a cast that includes actors but also some family members.
Narrator: Jarrett J. Krosoczka, Jeanne Birdsall, Richard Ferrone, Jenna Lamia
Length: 2 hours and 50 minutes
Ages: Young Adult
“Hey, Kiddo was a National Book Award finalist as a graphic memoir, recognising the literary power of Krosoczka’s personal story of his mother’s heroin addiction and childhood with alcoholic grandparents. It’s told from the point of view of Krosoczka at age 17, and teens forge an immediate connection with the author’s description of how his artistic talent helped him survive his upbringing.” Read more...
Charlotte's Web
by E.B. White & Garth Williams (illustrator)
***2020 Audie Awards Best Audiobook for Middle Grade***
The audiobook version of E. B. White’s classic tale, Charlotte’s Web, is narrated by Meryl Streep and a full cast of actors.
Length: 4 hours and 2 minutes
Ages: 8-11
“It is very nice having a title that’s for younger children recognized as a truly stellar audiobook, because sometimes people think that audiobooks are to help kids learn to read and not for them to fall in love with literature. But that’s what the audiobook recording of Charlotte’s Web does. It lets young kids and their parents revisit a beautiful title and fall in love with the book.” Read more...
The Undefeated
Kwame Alexander, illustrated by Kadir Nelson
***Winner of the 2020 Caldecott Medal***
“It’s about the contributions that African Americans have made to America and celebrating and exploring those. The poetry is striking and it’s such a perfect partnership between Kadir Nelson’s illustrations and Kwame Alexander’s words. It’s just this beautiful love letter to America.” Read more...
The Best Children’s Books: The 2020 Newbery Medal and Honor Winners
Krishna Grady, Librarian
New Kid
by Jerry Craft
***Winner of the 2020 Newbery Medal***
New Kid by Jerry Craft is wonderful graphic novel about a Black kid who goes to a private school and feels out of place. It won the 2020 Newbery Medal, America's most prestigious prize for a children's book, but is relatable for kids anywhere.
Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story
Kevin Noble Maillard & Juana Martinez-Neal (illustrator)
***Winner 2020 Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal***
“First of all, the cover totally drew me in. Juana Martinez-Neal’s illustrations are always so warm and inviting and made me want to read it straight away. What I love about this book is that while it’s specifically a Native American family story, it really could be any family that is connecting and bonding over a tradition and over food. The text is brief and delightfully bubbles along, it’s poetic. Between the pictures and the words, you can imagine all the scrumptious food smells and the joy of the togetherness.” Read more...
Bianca Schulze, Children's Author
“Tomi Adeyemi’s action-filled and incredibly fast-paced novel is about 17 year old Zélie and her companions who have all suffered in different ways at the hands of the cruel king and their unjust world. In a tight race against time, they are on a quest to bring magic back to the land of Orïsha and restore power to the oppressed maji.” Read more...
Best West African Fantasy Books for Teenagers
Efua Traoré, Children's Author
Planetarium: Welcome to the Museum
Raman Prinja (illustrated by Chris Wormell)
*** Winner of the 2019 Royal Society Young People’s Book Prize***
“If you’re interested at all in what’s out there in space, this book is particularly gorgeous.” Read more...
The Best Science Books for Kids: the 2019 Royal Society Young People’s Book Prize
Sheila Rowan, Physicist
The Poet X
by Elizabeth Acevedo
*** Winner of the 2019 Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature***
***Winner of the 2019 Carnegie Medal***
The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo has also won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature and the Pura Belpré Award, which celebrates a "Latino/Latina writer and illustrator whose work best portrays, affirms, and celebrates the Latino cultural experience."
It's about a girl (with a twin brother) coming of age in Harlem in New York City. Her mum is religious and would have preferred to be a nun. "If Medusa was Dominican and had a daughter, I think I'd be her," says the narrator, Xiomara, who eventually finds herself through poetry and the support of an inspiring teacher.
The Lost Words
Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris (illustrator)
***Winner of the 2019 Kate Greenaway Medal***
“This is a book of poems about nature for children. Each poem describes an individual animal, creature or plant and contains words that are going out of usage. It’s very playful and compelling. The illustrations are utterly breathtaking. Jackie Morris… she’s got to be one of the most brilliant artists working in children’s books at the moment.” Read more...
The Best Picture Books of 2017
Zoe Greaves, Children's Author
