Children's & Young Adult Literature: Book Lists & Book Awards

Selected by the Books for Youth editors, titles constitute the year’s best personal reading for teenagers among adult books published in 2014.

Committed to providing a broad selection of outstanding books that mixes popular appeal with literary excellence, the Books for Youth editorial staff has chosen titles representing what they believe to be best-of-the-year nonfiction and fiction books and picture books.

Great Graphic Novels for Teens is a list of recommended graphic novels and illustrated nonfiction for those ages 12-18, prepared yearly by YALSA.

Chosen annually by theeditors, Fanfare is The Horn Book Magazine’s selection of the best children’s and young adult books of the year.

The Batchelder Award is given to the most outstanding children’s book originally published in a language other than English in a country other than the United States, and subsequently translated into English for publication in the United States.

The Coretta Scott King Book Awards are given annually to outstanding African American authors and illustrators of books for children and young adults that demonstrate an appreciation of African American culture and universal human values.

The Geisel Award is given annually to the author(s) and illustrator(s) of the most distinguished American book for beginning readers published in English in the United States during the preceding year.

The Newbery Medal was named for eighteenth-century British bookseller John Newbery. It is awarded annually by the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association, to the author of the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children.

This annual award is given to the producer of the best audiobook produced for children and/or young adults, available in English in the United States

The award is named after Pura Belpré, the first Latina librarian at the New York Public Library. The Pura Belpré Award, established in 1996, is presented annually to a Latino/Latina writer and illustrator whose work best portrays, affirms, and celebrates the Latino cultural experience in an outstanding work of literature for children and youth

The Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal is awarded annually to the author(s) and illustrator(s) of the most distinguished informational book published in the United States in English during the preceding year. The award is named in honor of Robert F. Sibert, the long-time President of Bound to Stay Bound Books, Inc. of Jacksonville, Illinois. ALSC administers the award.

The Wilder Award honors an author or illustrator whose books, published in the United States, have made, over a period of years, a substantial and lasting contribution to literature for children.

The Aesop Prize and Aesop Accolades are conferred annually by the Children’s Folklore Section of the American Folklore Society upon English language books for children and young adults, both fiction and nonfiction.

In 1991, Africa Access in collaboration with the Outreach Council of the African Studies Association created the Children’s Africana Book Awards with three major objectives (1) to encourage the publication of children’s and young adult books that contribute to a better understanding of African societies and issues, (2) to recognize literary excellence, and (3) to acknowledge the research achievements of outstanding authors and illustrators.

The Agatha Awards honor the "traditional mystery." That is to say, books best typified by the works of Agatha Christie as well as others.

The Alberta Literary Awards were created by the Writers' Guild of Alberta in 1982 to recognize excellence in writing by Alberta authors. Submissions are evaluated on originality, creativity, and quality of writing, as well as appropriate fit within a category.

The Alex Awards are given to ten books written for adults that have special appeal to young adults, ages 12 through 18.

Given each year since the 1960s, AIP's Science Communication Awards promote effective science writing in print, broadcast and online in order to improve the general public’s appreciation of physics, astronomy and allied science fields.

The Américas Award is given in recognition of U.S. works of fiction, poetry, folklore, or selected non-fiction (from picture books to works for young adults) published in the previous year in English or Spanish that authentically and engagingly portray Latin America, the Caribbean, or Latinos in the United States.

The Arthur Ellis Awards are for CRIME WRITING, and are not restricted to mystery writing. Crime-writing encompasses far more than the traditional whodunit. The crime genre includes crime, detective...

The goal of the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature is to honor and recognize individual work about Asian/Pacific Americans and their heritage, based on literary and artistic merit.

The YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction honors the best nonfiction book published for young adults (ages 12-18) during a November 1 – October 31 publishing year.

The Josette Frank Award for fiction honors a book or books of outstanding literary merit in which children or young people deal in a positive and realistic way with difficulties in their world and grow emotionally and morally. The Flora Stieglitz Straus Award is presented annually for a distinguished work of nonfiction which serves as an inspiration to young people. The Claudia Lewis Award is given for the best poetry book of the year.

The BC Book Prizes, established in 1985, celebrate the achievements of British Columbia writers and publishers.

Winners are selected in three categories: Picture Book, Fiction and Poetry, and Nonfiction. Two Honor Books may be named in each category. On occasion, a book will receive a special citation for its high quality and overall creative excellence.

Blue Ribbons are chosen annually by the Bulletin staff and represent what we believe to be the best of the previous year's literature for youth.

The Burt Award for First Nations, Métis and Inuit Literature is a unique literary award and readership initiative established by CODE with the generous support of philanthropist William Burt and the Literary Prizes Foundation. The Award recognizes excellence in First Nations, Métis and Inuit literature for youth and provides engaging and culturally-relevant books for young people across Canada.

The California Book Awards strive to annually recognize the state’s best writers and illuminate the wealth and diversity of California-based literature. The California Book Awards began in 1931 with two gold medals – one for a work of fiction and one for nonfiction. Through the years, several more categories have been added along with the inclusion of silver medals. Currently categories consist of Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Juvenile Literature, Young Adult Literature, First Work of Fiction, Californiana, and Notable Contribution to Publishing.

The Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction were established in 2012 to recognize the best fiction and nonfiction books for adult readers published in the U.S. the previous year.

In 1974, National Council for the Social Studies established the Carter G. Woodson Book Award for the most distinguished social science books appropriate for young readers that depict ethnicity in the United States. The purpose of this award is to encourage the writing, publishing, and dissemination of outstanding social science books for young readers that treat topics related to ethnic minorities and relations sensitively and accurately.

The Charlotte Zolotow Award is given annually to the author of the best picture book text published in the United States in the preceding year. The award is administered by the Cooperative Children's Book Center, a children's literature library of the School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The Children’s Book Council of Australia Awards are for books with an implied readership under the age of eighteen. The Judges assess entries primarily for literary merit, including cohesiveness in significant literary elements; language chosen for its appropriateness to the theme and style of the work with proper regard to the aesthetic qualities of language; and originality in the treatment of literary elements as they apply to the form of the work. Appeal to the implied readership under the age of eighteen is also taken into account. Judges should also consider quality of illustrations, book design, production, printing and binding.

These books affirm new talent and offer visibility to excellence in writing or illustration at the beginning of a career as a published book creator.

The Costa Book Awards honor some of the most outstanding books of the year written by authors based in the UK and Ireland.

Each spring, Mystery Writers of America present the Edgar® Awards, widely acknowledged to be the most prestigious awards in the genre.

The Elsie Locke Non Fiction Award recognises a distinguished contribution to non-fiction for young people.

Known collectively as the Ezra Jack Keats Book Award, the New Writer Award was established in 1985 and the New Illustrator Award in 2001 to recognize and encourage emerging talent in the field of children’s books.

The Giverny Award is an annual children's science picture book award. Nominees must teach young readers at least one important scientific principle well, or encourage the reader toward specific science-related attitudes, pursuits, or inquiries.

The Golden Duck Awards, which are designed to encourage science fiction literature for children, are presented every year at Worldcon.

The Golden Kite Awards are given annually to recognize excellence in children’s literature in the previous calendar year by an SCBWI member in four categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, Picture Book Text, and Picture Book Illustration. Named for the late Newbery-winner Sid Fleischman, the SCBWI offers this eponymous award to authors whose work exemplifies excellence in the genre of humor, a category so often overlooked by other award committees in children’s literature.

Each year, the Governor General’s Literary Awards (the GGs) honor the best in Canadian literature. As Canada’s national literary awards, the GGs represent the rich diversity of Canadian literature and its authors, translators and illustrators.

The Green Earth Book Award is the nation’s first environmental stewardship book award for children and young adult books.

The Gryphon Award is given annually in recognition of an English language work of fiction or non-fiction for which the primary audience is children in Kindergarten through Grade 4. The title chosen best exemplifies those qualities that successfully bridge the gap in difficulty between books for reading aloud to children and books for practiced readers.

The Irma Simonton Black and James H. Black Award for Excellence in Children's Literature (Irma Black Award) goes to an outstanding book for young children - a book in which text and illustrations are inseparable, each enhancing and enlarging on the other to produce a singular whole. The Irma Black Award is unusual in that children are the final judges of the winning book.

The Lane Anderson Award honours the very best science writing in Canada today, both in the adult and young reading categories. Each award will be determined on the relevance of its content to the importance of science in today’s world, and the author’s ability to connect the topic to the interests of the general trade reader.

The Lillian Shepherd award for excellence in illustration is given to an illustrator residing in or from Atlantic Canada, or who has illustrated a book written by an Atlantic Canadian or a book that is set in the region.

The Book Prizes cover ten single-title categories: biography, current interest, fiction, first fiction (the Art Seidenbaum Award added 1991), graphic novel (added 2009), history, mystery/thriller (added in 2000), poetry, science and technology (added in 1989), and young adult literature (added in 1998).

The Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children’s Literature honors books for younger readers (from “Young Adults” to picture books for beginning readers), in the tradition of The Hobbit or The Chronicles of Narnia.

Established in 1950, the National Book Award is an American literary prize administered by the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization.

The goal for National Jewish Book Award judging panels is to select a quality book in their respective category that will appeal to a broad reading audience. Awards are presented in over 18 categories. In addition, since 2003, one non-fiction book has been selected as the winner of the Everett Family Foundation Jewish Book of the Year Award.

Every year since 1952, the Book Review has convened an independent panel of judges to select picture books on the basis of artistic merit. The winning books are chosen from among thousands for what is the only annual award of its kind.

Awards for the New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults are made in four categories: Young Adult Fiction, Junior Fiction, Non-fiction and Picture Book. Five finalists are selected for each category and from these a winner in each category is selected.

Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People is an annual reading list of exceptional books for use in social studies classrooms, selected by social studies educators.

The Blue Spruce, Red Maple, Silver Birch, and White Pine Awards titles are part of the Ontario Library Association's Forest of Reading program.

The NCTE Orbis Pictus Award was established in 1989 for promoting and recognizing excellence in the writing of nonfiction for children.

The books that appear in these lists were selected as outstanding children’s science trade books. They were chosen by a book review panel appointed by the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) and assembled in cooperation with the Children’s Book Council (CBC).

The Children's Literature Association, an organization of teachers, scholars, librarians, editors, writers, illustrators, and parents interested in encouraging the serious study of children's literature, created the Phoenix Award. The award, given to a book originally published in the English language, is intended to recognize books of high literary merit.

Every year, QWF shines the spotlight on the best English-language writers to emerge from Quebec.

Each year the Royal Society awards a prize to the best book that communicates science to young people. The prize aims to inspire young people to read about science and promotes the best science writing for the under-14s.

First established in 1975, the LIANZA Russell Clark Illustration Award recognises the most distinguished pictures or illustrations for a children’s book, by a New Zealand artist or illustrator. The pictures or illustrations must convey the spirit of the book, and judges take into account the format and physical make up of the book. The Russell Clark is one of the few national awards celebrating illustration.

The Schneider Family Book Awards honor an author or illustrator for a book that embodies an artistic expression of the disability experience for child and adolescent audiences.

In 1982, Scott O'Dell established The Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction. The annual award goes to an author for a meritorious book published in the previous year for children or young adults. Scott O'Dell established this award to encourage other writers--particularly new authors--to focus on historical fiction.

The first and most enduring award for GLBT books is the Stonewall Book Awards, sponsored by the American Library Association's Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Round Table.

The Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic is a juried award which recognizes exceptional writing in three categories: adult, young adult and short story.

The Sydney Taylor Book Award is presented annually to outstanding books for children and teens that authentically portray the Jewish experience. Presented by the Association of Jewish Libraries since 1968, the award encourages the publication and widespread use of quality Judaic literature.

Texas State University College of Education developed the Tomás Rivera Mexican American Children’s Book Award to honor authors and illustrators who create literature that depicts the Mexican American experience.

The award is offered annually for the best English language book containing at least 500 words of text (preferably with Canadian content) in any category, suitable for children aged 13 and under.

Annual literary awards were inaugurated by the Western Australian Government in 1982 to honor and celebrate the literary achievements of Western Australian writers.

First presented in 1961, the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum Western Heritage Awards were established to honor and encourage the legacy of those whose works in literature, music, film, and television reflect the significant stories of the American West.

Western Writers of America annually honors writers for distinguished writing about the American West with the Spur Awards.

The William C. Morris YA Debut Award, first awarded in 2009, honors a debut book published by a first-time author writing for teens and celebrating impressive new voices in young adult literature.

This is a handy resource if you’re interested in Newbery history, keeping track of which Medalists and Honor Books you’ve read, or choosing the next one to read. It’s also a fun place to test your skills.