The National Book Foundation has revealed the five finalists for the 2024 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature: Violet Duncan for Buffalo Dreamer (Penguin/Paulsen); Josh Galarza for The Great Cool Ranch Dorito in the Sky (Holt); Erin Entrada Kelly for The First State of Being (Greenwillow); Shifa Saltagi Safadi for Kareem Between (Putnam); and Angela Shanté for The Unboxing of a Black Girl (Page Street). The finalists were drawn from a longlist that was announced on September 10.
Teens Read the National Book Awards (formerly known as the Teen Press Conference) will take place on the morning of November 19 at Peter Norton Symphony Space in New York City, hosted by National Book Award winner Jacqueline Woodson. The event for local middle and high school students will include readings followed by a q&a and book signing with the five finalists. The conference will also be livestreamed, and the first 25 public school educators to register will receive one set of the finalist books.
The winners will be announced on November 20, at the NBA’s invitation-only 75th awards ceremony at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City; the awards will also be broadcast live.
Read on for PW’s reviews of the books by three of the finalists:
Buffalo Dreamer by Violet Duncan
“Twelve-year-old Summer is excited to leave Arizona and visit her family on the Cree reservation in Northern Alberta, where she will ride horses and enjoy fish fries with her cousin, kokom, and mosom, who attended a residential school as a child. Shortly before reaching the reservation, however, Summer begins experiencing vivid, persistent dreams about a girl from the past struggling to escape a nearby residential school where, in Summer’s waking world, a crew has begun searching for recently discovered unmarked graves. Plains Cree and Taino author Duncan juxtaposes Summer’s intense dreams with the low-conflict nature of her everyday life, which includes detailed descriptions of Native traditions such as picking sweetgrass, making for a brief look into Indigenous customs and history.”
The Great Cool Ranch Dorito in the Sky by Josh Galarza
“Smuggling the newest issue of his self-authored comic book, Kid Condor, into the school library is just one of the many things that Brett Isaias Harrison, 16, is up to.... Brett’s quirky voice—a mix of self-conscious thoughts, Kid Condor mythology, and bro-isms (“You ready for some nuggs, bruh?”)—tempers this funny yet bruising narrative about one teen’s experience with grief and disordered eating in which debut author Galarza carefully touches on issues surrounding underage drinking, body dysmorphia, and internalized anti-fatness.”
The First State of Being by Erin Entrada Kelly
“When a mysterious teenager named Ridge appears at Michael Rosario’s apartment complex on Michael’s 12th birthday in 1999, Michael believes there’s “something off” about him. Ridge soon reveals he’s from 2199 and, after being goaded by his brothers, used the recently developed, controversial Spatial Teleportation Module to travel back to 1999, his ‘favorite year in history.’ As Michael and Gibby [his 15-year-old babysitter and crush] indulge Ridge’s fascination with shopping malls and 1999 objects, he develops a previously unknown self-confidence that is well rendered and endearing.”
