And Now... The Winners! American Library Association 2021Youth Media Awards Announced

From an abundance of caution, the American Library Association (ALA) has announced the 2021 Youth Media Awards at their (first) virtual annual winter meeting with a bang and a bunch of Newbery winners. Taking the gold Newbery Award was Tae Keller for When You Trap a Tiger (Thornberry, 2020), and with two co-Newbery Honor awards to Christina Soontornvat, for her non-fiction account All Thirteen: The Incredible Cave Rescue of the Thai Boys' Soccer Team (Newbery Honor Book), (Candlewick Books, 2020), the stranger-than-fiction amazing story of the rescue of a team's holiday visit to a famous cave, a popular underground field trip which was suddenly flooded. The young teenagers required a daring rescue through flooded tunnels in the cave by professional scuba divers, in which all the young teammates survived and one brave diver died. This book also received the ALA Robert F Sibert Informational Book Honor Award. Soontornvat's second 2021 Newbery Honor was given for her novel, A Wish in the Dark (Candlewick, 2020.).

Joining Soontornvoat's Newbery duo is Carol Boston Weatherford's true story in dramatic poem format, BOX: Henry Brown Mails Himself to Freedom (Candlewick, 2020), an account of a clever slave boy who emancipated himself by sending himself through the mail in a large box. Other 2021 Newbery Honor Books are Kimberly Bradley Brubaker Bradley's Fighting Words (Dial Books, 2020), and We Dream of Space (Greenwillow Books, 2020) by Erin Entrada Kelly. The other eagerly-awaited ALA book award, those for picture book artists and  called the Caldecott Award, go to artist Michaela Goad, for We Are Water Protectors (Roaring Brook, 2020), written by Carole Lindstrom. Caldecott Honor Awards go to artist Noa Denby, written by Etta Elliott, A Place Inside of Me: A Poem to Heal the Heart (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2020), Cozbi Cabrera's Me & Mama (Simon & Schuster, 2020), and to artist Cindy Denby for Outside In (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020), written by Deborah Underwood.

For other  American Libary Association prestigious award winners, read more here: