The 2021 winners of the Caldecott, Newbery & Printz awards
The American Library Association (ALA) has announced its top books for children and young adults, including the influential Caldecott, Newbery and Printz awards.
The winners include…
Winner of the John Newbery Medal for the most outstanding contribution to children’s literature:
When You Trap a Tiger by Tae Keller
When Lily and her family move in with her sick grandmother, a magical tiger straight out of her halmoni’s Korean folktales arrives, prompting Lily to unravel a secret family history. Long, long ago, Halmoni stole something from the tigers. Now they want it back. And when one of the tigers approaches Lily with a deal–return what her grandmother stole in exchange for Halmoni’s health–Lily is tempted to agree. But deals with tigers are never what they seem! With the help of her sister and her new friend Ricky, Lily must find her voice…and the courage to face a tiger.
Winner of the Randolph Caldecott Medal for the most distinguished American picture book for children:
We are Water Protectors, illustrations by Michaela Goaden (written by Carole Lindstrom)
Inspired by the many Indigenous-led movements across North America, We Are Water Protectors issues an urgent rallying cry to safeguard the Earth’s water from harm and corruption.
Water is the first medicine.It affects and connects us all …
When a black snake threatens to destroy the Earth and poison her people’s water, one young water protector takes a stand to defend Earth’s most sacred resource.
Winner of the Michael L. Printz Award for excellence in literature written for young adults:
Everything Sad is Untrue by Daniel Nayeri
At the front of a middle school classroom in Oklahoma, a boy named Khosrou (whom everyone calls “Daniel”) stands, trying to tell a story. His story. But no one believes a word he says.
To them he is a dark-skinned, hairy-armed boy with a big butt whose lunch smells funny; who makes things up and talks about poop too much. But Khosrou’s stories, stretching back years, and decades, and centuries, are beautiful, and terrifying, from themoment his family fled Iran in the middle of the night with the secret police moments behind them, back to the sad, cement refugee camps of Italy…and further back to the fieldsnear the river Aras, where rain-soaked flowersbled red like the yolk of the sunset had burst over everything, and further back still to the jasmine-scented city of Isfahan.
Like Scheherazade in a hostile classroom, Daniel weaves a tale to save his own life: to stake his claim to the truth. And it is (a true story).
