More than 600 students and teachers from 24 New York City middle and high schools gathered at Symphony Space on November 19 for the 2024 Teens Read event, formerly known as the Teen Press Conference. This year’s finalists for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature were invited for a morning of sharing their work and process with readers.

The event opened with greetings from Ruth Dickey, executive director of the National Book Foundation, who briefly introduced the National Book Awards (“the Oscars for books”), which highlight the 10 most outstanding works of literature for children each year for its longlist. Violet Duncan, Erin Entrada Kelly, Josh Galarza, Shifa Saltagi Safadi, and Angela Shanté, the five finalists, were selected out of the 333 books submitted for consideration. Dickey introduced the morning’s host, NBA winner Jacqueline Woodson, to kick off the day.

Looking out over the audience of young readers, Woodson reflected on how her own literary ambitions as a young person were encouraged by a similar experience meeting a writer. “I didn't meet an author until I was in 11th grade,” Woodson said. Her first meeting was with Piri Thomas, during a school visit, and when she was selected to meet Thomas and take a photo, she distinctly recalled thinking to herself, “I’m touching a writer!” This warm memory felt like a parallel moment, as students present would get to meet the NBA authors after the event, and at an even younger age than she did.

“For the many writers in the room, maybe you’ll be here one day,” Woodson said. “Just imagine this moment. I’m so grateful to the National Book Foundation and all of the sponsors who bring it to us.”

Introducing the panelists, Woodson said, “The works we’re celebrating today represent many different stories and many different perspectives, which is exciting because there are so many stories and perspectives in this room. One good thing about reading books where you see parts of yourselves in them is you can imagine yourself as something different.”

Take a Page Out of My Book

Each of the finalists had the opportunity to give a reading from their nominated book.

Violet Duncan took the stage first, reading from Buffalo Dreamer (Penguin/Paulsen), in which the protagonist has dreams about a girl running away from a residential school. Upon finding safety, the girl gives thanks to her relatives. “I smile safely. Thank you hiy hiy, nanaskomen. Thank you Thunderbird spirit for hiding my foot tracks.”

Josh Galarza read from his debut YA novel The Great Cool Ranch Dorito in the Sky (Holt), bringing to life his main character Brett, as he and his best friend break into their library to slip copies of Brett’s comics into popular books such as Heartstopper and Percy Jackson. That is, until security, known here as the “fuzz,” catches them. “How carefully will he make his circuit? If Reed and I play this right, we could still escape. We just have to find each other before the fuzz finds us.”

Erin Entrada Kelly gave voice to Michael, the 12-year-old character at the center of The First State of Being (Greenwillow). In the excerpt, Michael and his babysitter Gibby leave their home to feed the cats in their neighborhood. While on their walk, Michael shares a newfound dream with Gibby: to become a football player. Kelly read, “He did know if he played football, people might like him. Girls. Even girls like Gibby. No one had ever liked him before, not like that. Not like anything, really.”

In her reading from Kareem Between (Putnam), Shifa Saltagi Safadi highlighted the titular tween’s excitement for football tryouts, but afterward feels “my possibility of playing quarterback tumbles out of reach.” When his suspicions are confirmed and he’s left off the team, Kareem observes the praise popular student Austin receives for being the star footballer. “All I can think is, if I was on the team, I wouldn't be invisible.”

The final reading of the morning was from Angela Shanté, who selected a few poems from her collection The Unboxing of a Black Girl (Page Street). Shanté read “High School,” discussing the difficult decision parents must make to send their children to underfunded “zone” schools in their communities or take a chance on receiving better opportunities away from the comfort of their neighborhoods; and “The Talk,” a poem on the warnings Black parents often give their children about navigating the world safely. Noting that there was “a lot going on in our world and [how I] wanted you all to sit with it” in her closing poem, “The Binary,” Shanté spoke of “binary boxes for a binary world, a jagged edge world deep, deep down in the fabric of our nation.”


Asked and Answered

Students eagerly raced to microphones at the front of both aisles for their opportunity to ask the finalists a question.

When asked about introducing the time travel element to her book, Kelly responded, “I love time travel, and I knew I wanted to connect time travel with Y2K, somehow, and that’s how it came about—because I always want to travel to the past.”

Galarza shared the story behind the humorous title of his novel, The Great Cool Ranch Dorito in the Sky. “I would lie out on my trampoline in the backyard staring at the stars. I didn’t know any names of constellations, but I kept seeing this giant triangle above my head, which I now know is the Summer Triangle. And I was like, ‘That’s a Dorito, look!’ So, the mythology started there.”

A student asked Duncan about the inspiration behind her book, which Duncan explained was brought on by the discovery of the 215 unmarked graves of Indigenous children in British Columbia. “My children were asking questions like, ‘What is this school? Why were there cemeteries? Why are they hidden?’ And I started to write because other children need to know this. Other young people—even their educators, their caregivers—need to know these answers as well.”

Safadi explained her choice to have the layout of the words on the page match the emotional highs and lows of the story. “I was inspired to write this way because I really wanted kids to love reading. And one thing I love about verse is that it’s imagery on the page. I loved how I could show more messages to the kids who are reading this book, and when you can feel like you’re in the book, and experience it and see the images, it makes it a little more fun, too.”

Shanté told students about the origins of her poetry collection. “I enjoy verse and I enjoy writing poems with patterns and things in it, and so I didn’t want to write a traditional book, because I’m a poet first.”

Though not every student could make it to the mic, they were delighted to learn there would be a book signing to close the event, where they were able to speak with the authors one-on-one.