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Children's Book Awards/
Award-Winning Children's BooksIncludes selected major awards and winners, 2002-2008
Fully updated with 2008 winners.
Why awards matter, and what you'll find here
Awards are important in children's books. They tell publishers, writers, and illustrators, what is considered to be "the best," and thus the standards they must strive to attain.
Awards are important to publishers for an additional reason. Many children's book awards, though not all, are selected by librarians. The library market is still important to many publishers, and the most prestigious awards not only bestow honors but lead to significantly increased sales. They are an important part of the business.
For writers and illustrators, getting to know the award-winning books is one of the ways to understand what is considered to be the best today, rather than 20 or 30 or 40 years ago, when we were children. We can't read every new book that's released, but we can make a point of finding the award-winners.
This section provides information about 10 US awards, most of them awarded by the American Library Association. It lists recent award winners, and some of the "honor books," announced from 2002 to 2007. This is a dual-purpose information and shopping area. So you'll find links to pages where you can purchase the book or books you want, and also links that provide more information, including the official home pages of the various awards. (Purchase of books from this page will generate referrals that help keep this web site operating.)
The most recent award-winners are picked out in red text. This section is now updated with the major ALA awards announced in January 2008.
More sources of information and places to buy award-winning books
- For even more awards, visit David K. Brown's Children's Book Awards page, which at least used to be the most comprehensive list on the Internet. It's now a few years out of date, but so comprehensive that it's still very useful.
- Database of Award-Winning Children's Literature. Compiled by a librarian, and also very comprehensive.
- The Children's Book Council has a comprehensive awards database online, but you must pay for access.
- Anastasia Suen created this Best Children's Books Lists page, to get you beyond the winner-take-all awards.
- As a handy starting point to buy these books and other award-winners, go straight to this Amazon.com page of award-winners, including some awards not covered here.
- To find award-winning books "on sale", see the award-winning books available at BookCloseouts.com. This page links to pages of Newbery, Caldecott, Coretta Scott King, and other winners (these are remainders or discontinued editions).
Articles about awards
- The Bank Street Children's Books Committee Children's Book Awards: My blog entry on some awards and a "Best" list that deserve to be better-known.
- Children's Book Prizes, Cultural Capital, and the American Public Sphere: An academic look at the meaning of awards.
- Roger Sutton on Gender Imbalances in the Caldecott [and other awards]: This starts as a short comment by Roger Sutton of The Horn Book on the disproportionate number of men among Caldecott award-winners, which kicks off a lengthy series of comments on this and other awards. Well worth browsing.
- Slippery Slopes and Proliferating Prizes: Comments by Marc Aronson from 2001: a critique of identity-based awards.
