The Children’s Book Council and Every Child a Reader have announced the finalists for its 10th annual Children’s and Teen Choice Book Awards. Young readers across the country will vote online for the finalists in four categories from Friday, March 3 through Sunday, May 7—the last day of Children’s Book Week.
The 2017 finalists were selected by 36,000 children nationwide, in a process overseen by the International Literacy Association. Teens nominated their favorite books of the year at TeenReads.com to determine the finalists for the Teen Choice Book Award. Voting for the winners in all four categories will be managed by DOGO Media.
The finalists for the Kindergarten to Second Grade category are Don’t Wake Up the Tiger by Britta Teckentrup (Candlewick/Nosy Crow); Frankencrayon by Michael Hall (Greenwillow); King Baby by Kate Beaton (Scholastic/Levine); Madeline Finn and the Library Dog by Lisa Papp (Peachtree); Nanobots by Chris Gall (Little, Brown); Peep and Egg: I’m Not Hatching by Laura Gehl, illus. by Joyce Wan (Farrar, Straus and Giroux); and The Thank You Book by Mo Willems (Disney-Hyperion).
The Third to Fourth Grade finalists are The Ant and the Grasshopper by Carl Sommer, illus. by Ignacio Noe (Advance Publishing); Duck on a Tractor by David Shannon (Scholastic/Blue Sky); The Hole Story of the Doughnut by Pat Miller, illus. by Vincent Kirsch (HMH); Noodlehead Nightmares by Tedd Arnold, Martha Hamilton, and Mitch Weiss, illus. by Tedd Arnold (Holiday House); Once Upon an Elephant by Linda Stanek, illus. by Shennen Bersani (Arbordale); Whoosh!: Lonnie Johnson’s Super-Soaking Stream of Inventions by Chris Barton, illus. by Don Tate (Charlesbridge); and Wolf Camp by Andrea Zuill (Random House/Schwartz & Wade).
For the Fifth to Sixth Grade category, the finalists are Booked by Kwame Alexander (HMH); Fuzzy by Tom Angleberger and Paul Dellinger (Abrams/Amulet); Garvey’s Choice by Nikki Grimes (Boyds Mills/WordSong); Saving the Whole Wide World (Hilo Book 2) by Judd Winick (Random House); Maker Lab by Jack Challoner (DK); The Misadventures of Max Crumbly 1: Locker Hero by Rachel Renée Russell (S&S/Aladdin); and Wet Cement by Bob Raczka (Roaring Brook).
The finalists for the Teen Choice Book Award category are A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas (Bloomsbury); Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo (Holt); The Crown by Kiera Cass (HarperCollins); Harry Potter and The Cursed Child: Parts 1 and 2 by J.K. Rowling et al. (Scholastic/Levine); The Sun Is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon (Random House); This Is Where it Ends by Marieke Nijkamp (Sourcebooks Fire); and A Torch Against the Night by Sabaa Tahir (Razorbill).
The winners will be announced on May 31 at a ceremony during BookExpo featuring Gene Luen Yang, the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. Fifty copies of each winning title, as well as all the finalist books, will be donated by the CBC to children in need across the country.
