Monday, Jan. 22, is an exciting day for librarians, booksellers, publishers and readers of all ages. As a librarian, it feels like a holiday — it is the day of this year’s American Library Association Youth Media Awards.
These awards highlight the best of the best published during the preceding year. The awards cover a wide range of categories: from the oldest well-known awards such as the Newbery and Caldecott, to newer awards such as the Alex Awards (books written for adults that have special appeal to young adults, ages 12-18); the Schneider Family Book Award (honoring an author or illustrator for a book that embodies an artistic expression of the disability experience for child and adolescent audiences); and the Coretta Scott King Awards (given 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).
So, if you’re curious about this year’s winners, check out the live broadcast starting at 8 a.m. EST or catch the recording later. The authors, illustrators and media that receive awards are well-worth checking out, whether you’re nine or 99.
If you were on an award selection committee, what would you select as the “best of the best” from 2023? Here are my top five (with the caveat that this is the best from my own reading — there are many other great titles published last year that I didn’t have the time to read).
1. Best adult fiction: The Cairo Curse by Pepper D. Basham
Billed as “Clue meets Indiana Jones with a fiction-loving twist,” this exciting sequel to The Mistletoe Countess has delightful characters, as well as plenty of danger and intrigue. I learned some interesting historical information about Egyptian exploration and antiquities thefts. Published early in 2023, the third book in the series was published in December and is high on my TRB (to be read list).
2. Best adult nonfiction: Woven: Nurturing a Faith your Kid Doesn’t Have to Heal From by Meredith Miller
Rather than building a wall of faith on foundation stones (beliefs), what if we nurture a faith like a web in which anchor strands and internal threads combine to form a unique web? This book helps parents guide children to anchor to who God is and to develop their own faith practices that are rich, textured and all their own. When we build a rigid wall of faith, sometimes a brick is knocked out by life experiences, new understandings or wrestling with questions of faith, and thus the wall becomes weaker and may even fall if too many bricks are removed. With a web, the internal threads may be ripped away, but the anchor strands hold the web together as the spider repairs the damage with something new and beautiful. This book helps cast a vision for how to nurture a lasting, living faith at home.
3. Best board book: Today I Feel Like a Jelly Donut by Katie Kenny Phillips
This sweet board book may be designed for kids, but it is great for adults too! This book helps readers of all ages identify their feelings by comparing their many moods to different foods. It reminds us that we are all full of many good God-given emotions, and God loves us no matter which food we might be feeling like.
4. Best children’s nonfiction: The Peace Table: A Storybook Bible from Shine Curriculum
This beautiful storybook Bible has 140 Bible stories as well as a wealth of extras that make this a perfect tool for faith formation at home as well as at church. Our family read through the entire Bible for nightly devotions, and it encourages growth as a family in addition to nurturing each of our individual faith journeys. Each Bible story has “I Wonder” questions to help us make connections with the Biblical narrative and God’s truths and how we can learn and grow. There are also a wide variety of prayer prompts that encourage praying with movement, music, words, silence and even our breath. Our daughter was always so excited to see how we were going to talk to God each evening. Finally, I just want to mention just how many questions or activities honored feelings and emotions — this really is a whole-person affirming Bible. God loves ALL of us inside and out and calls us to a deeper relationship and faithful discipleship.
5. Best children’s chapter book: A Twisty-Turny Journey by Mike Nawrocki
I don’t know if this volume was really my absolute favorite this year, but the series as a whole definitely was! These early-reader chapter books are FUNNY. A Twisty-Turny Journey is book 11 in the Dead Sea Squirrels series. Featured are Merle and Pearl who are squirrels that lived at the time of Jesus, and who took a vacation to the Dead Sea, got dehydrated by the salt, crawled into a cave to get out of the heat and were smuggled home to Tennessee by 10-year-old Michael Gomez. These books are laugh-out-loud funny. When the squirrels are placed under an open window during a rainstorm, they are re-hydrated. Merle and Pearl have many adventures with a cast of lovable characters (human and animal alike) that learn lessons from the life of Christ and the Holy Land, as they try to escape from the squirrel-nappers.
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