The Children’s Book Council and Every Child a Reader have announced the finalists for their 11th annual Children’s and Teen Choice Book Awards. Young readers nationwide will vote online for the finalists in four categories from March 1 through May 6—the last day of Children’s Book Week.
The 2018 finalists (five in each category, down from seven in previous years) were selected by more than 10,000 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.
The finalists for the Kindergarten to Second Grade category are Billy Bloo Is Stuck in Goo by Jennifer Hamburg, illus. by Ross Burach (Scholastic Press); Books That Drive Kids Crazy: Did You Take the B from My _ook? by Beck and Matt Stanton (Little, Brown); Pete with No Pants by Rowboat Watkins (Chronicle); Poor Louie by Tony Fucile (Candlewick); and This Book Will Not Be Fun by Cirocco Dunlap, illus. by Olivier Tallec (Random House).
The Third to Fourth Grade finalists are 50 Wacky Things Animals Do by Tricia Martineau Wagner, illus. by Carles Ballesteros (Quarto/Walter Foster Jr.); Frederick Douglass: The Lion Who Wrote History by Walter Dean Myers, illus. by Floyd Cooper (HarperCollins); Manjhi Moves a Mountain by Nancy Churnin, illus. by Danny Popovici (Creston); Out of Wonder: Poems Celebrating Poets by Kwame Alexander, illus. by Ekua Holmes (Candlewick); and Thunder Underground by Jane Yolen, illus. by Josee Masse (Boyds Mills/WordSong).
For the Fifth to Sixth Grade category, the finalists are Disaster Diaries: Spiders! by R. McGeddon (Macmillan/Imprint); Finding Mighty by Sheela Chari (Abrams/Amulet); The Losers Club by Andrew Clements (Random House); Malala: Activist for Girls’ Education by Raphaelle Frier, illus. by Aurelia Fronty (Charlesbridge); and This Is Just a Test by Wendy Wan-Long Shang and Madelyn Rosenberg (Scholastic Press).
The finalists for the Teen Choice Book Award category are Because You Love to Hate Me, ed. by Ameriie (Bloomsbury); Caraval by Stephanie Garber (Flatiron); The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas (HarperCollins/Balzer + Bray); Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds (Atheneum/Dlouhy); and Turtles All the Way Down by John Green (Dutton).
Shaina Birkhead, programming and strategic partnerships director for the Children’s Book Council and Every Child a Reader, said in a statement, “We are proud to work with so many teachers, librarians, and booksellers to help gather the votes—and for kids and teens to be able to vote for new books written for them.”
This year’s winners will be announced on May 30, during a ceremony at BookExpo in New York City, hosted by husband-and-wife collaborators Sean Qualls and Selina Alko. Copies of the winning books and finalists will be donated to literacy organizations in June through the Children’s Book Week display contest’s winning libraries, schools, or stores.
Registration is open now through February 9 to become an official event location for the 99th annual Children’s Book Week celebration. Participating schools, libraries and bookstores will receive free Book Week posters designed by author-illustrator Jillian Tamaki and access to new downloadable materials, including original bookmarks, a comic book, and book award ballots, stickers, and suggestions for setting up voting booths. All official Book Week events will also be featured on the Children’s Book Council’s interactive online map.
