This has been a year in which we’ve all — adults and children — needed books desperately. We also really missed having the wisdom of librarians and book-store clerks to guide us in choosing the next favorite, unputdownable, read-to-me-every-night book for our very bored, stuck-at-home kids. Well, we have that wisdom now, in the form of the annual American Library Association (ALA) 2021 Youth Media Awards.
Those diligent librarians were reading just as much as ever in 2020, and they’ve selected the highly respected Newberry and Caldecott medals, along with the Coretta Scott King Book Awards and several other honors for books written for young readers. There are awards for the best depiction of Latinx people, Asian Americans, Jewish people, those with disability, and more. While we’re sure the writers of these books are extremely happy to receive those awards (and shiny, embossed designs on their covers), they mean something even more important for parents, teachers, and kids. When faced with that long daunting list or those big, shelves packed with books, it’s very helpful to have some hints about what to buy or check out next.
Among this year’s ALA awards, you’ll find magic in books like When You Trap a Tiger, about a girl trying to bargain with a tiger for her grandmother’s health. And you’ll find music, in biographies like R-E-S-P-E-C-T: Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul. Stir up hunger with ¡Vamos! Let’s Go Eat or bring out tears with Before the Ever After.
With this list, we’ve only scratched the surface of the great books for children and teens the ALA awarded this year, so be sure to visit their website for more recommendations. And prepare yourself for the strange absence of “Mooooom, I’m so borrrred” groans.
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Korean Folklore as Middle Grade Entertainment
In When You Trap a Tiger, by Tae Keller, shy Lily and her family have moved in with her sick grandmother, and so has a magical tiger who wants something the grandmother stole from his kind long ago. This tale earned the 2021 John Newbery Medal for the most outstanding contribution to children’s literature. (Ages 8-12 years.)
A Picture Book for Present & Future Environmentalists
Written by Carole Lindstrom and illustrated by Michaela Goade, We Are Water Protectors just won the Randolph Caldecott Medal for the most distinguished American picture book for children. It is a gorgeous poetic tribute to the fight by Indigenous peoples to save one of our most precious natural resources for all who need it. (Ages 3-6 years.)
A Tearjerker About CTE
National Book Award winner Jacqueline Woodson adds another trophy to her case with Before the Ever After. This heartbreaking middle-grade story, about a boy whose pro-football player father is suddenly acting angry and forgetful, has won a Coretta Scott King Book Award. (Ages 10-14 years.)
A Delicious Trip to the Lucha Libre
Raúl Gonzalez’s vintage-cartoon visuals protraying Little Lobo’s journey to a border-town wrestling match in ¡Vamos! Let’s Go Eat, won him the Pura Belpré Illustrator Award for affirming and celebrating the Latinx experience. They also make every reader want to search for a local food truck ahora mismo. (Ages 4-7 years.)
An Afro-Latin YA Twist on Greek Mythology
Lilliam Rivera’s Never Look Back, a version of Orpheus and Eurydice, in one of this year’s Pura Belpré Young Adult Author Honor Books. Ancient Greece makes way for the Bronx, where Eury just moved after Hurricane Maria, though she’s still haunted by a dark spirit she met there. (Ages 13-17 years.)
A Queen’s Biography
Crank up a soundtrack while you and your little ones read Carole Boston Weatherford’s biography R-E-S-P-E-C-T: Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul. Frank Morrison’s illustrations won this book the Coretta Scott King Illustration Award. (Ages 4-8 years.)
A Story of a Story-Teller
Daniel Nayeri’s Everything Sad Is Untrue (a true story), isn’t just about Khosrou, an Iranian refugee living in Oklahoma. The 2021 Printz Award winner is about the other stories he tells, of his life before, and the lives of generations past, in a land his peers can’t even imagine. (Ages 10 and up.)
A Book About the Ebb & Flow of Language
In I Talk Like a River, by Jordan Scott and illustrated by Sydney Smith, the narrator faces the fear and isolation of having a stutter. But his father brings him to a river and shows him a different way to think about the way he expresses himself. This book won Schneider Family Book Award for books that embody an artistic expression of the disability experience. (Ages 4-8 years.)
Feminism Begins Here
One of the Little Feminist board book series for children, We Are Little Feminists: Families, written by Archaa Shrivastav, designed by Lindsey Blakely, shows the youngest readers a representation of what all kinds of families look like. It won the (clunkily named but honorable) Stonewall Book Awards – Mike Morgan & Larry Romans Children’s & Young Adult Literature Award.
A Fascinating Immigration Story
Tyrus Wong, an artist who went on to create the backgrounds for Bambi, came to the U.S. from China posing with his father, posing as a wealthy family — a necessary lie for the era’s immigration laws. Doing justice to the artist on which it’s based, Paper Son: The Inspiring Story of Tyrus Wong, Immigrant and Artist, written by Julie Leung and illustrated by Chris Sasaki won the Asian/Pacific American Award for Picture Books. (Ages 4-8 years.)
A World War II Novel of Letters
Maybe one day there will be enough stories of the many strange ways young people were affected by World War II, but we have not yet reached that point. Andrew Fukuda’s This Light Between Us follows a Japanese-American boy and a French Jewish girl who became pen pals in an era when no two such kids were supposed to have anything in common. This is the Youth Literature Asian/Pacific American Award winner. (Ages 13-18 years.)
A Book About Coming Out of Your Shell
In Turtle Boy, seventh-grader Will Levine’s bar mitzvah community service project is to visit another boy, RJ, who is suffering from a serious illness in the hospital. To help him complete his bucket list, Will’s got to go way out of his comfort zone. With this debut, M. Evan Wolkenstein won the middle-grade category of the Sydney Taylor Book Award, for books that authentically portray the Jewish experience. (Ages 10-14 years.)
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