As you may or may not know, this year the National Book Awards have paired with The New Yorker to exclusively reveal each of the ten book longlists in the categories of Young People’s Literature, Poetry, Nonfiction, and Fiction. The first of these, “Young People’s Literature” has been released and the surprise is seeing how many of the titles the five personal panel of judges selected are written not for children at all but young adults. With the sole exceptions of Ali Benjamin’s The Thing About Jellyfish and Gary Paulsen’s This Side of Wild, all the titles listed for young people are for readers between the ages of 12-18. Curious? Check out some of these titles from the Evanston Public Library system by following the links below:
- Becky Albertalli, Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda (Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins Children’s Books)
- M.T. Anderson, Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad (Candlewick Press)
- Ali Benjamin, The Thing About Jellyfish (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
- Gary Paulsen, This Side of Wild: Mutts, Mares, and Laughing Dinosaurs (Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing)
- Laura Ruby, Bone Gap (Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins Children’s Books)
- Ilyasah Shabazz, with Kekla Magoon, X: A Novel (Candlewick Press)
- Steve Sheinkin, Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War (Roaring Brook Press/Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group)
- Neal Shusterman, Challenger Deep (HarperCollins Children’s Books)
- Noelle Stevenson, Nimona (HarperTeen/HarperCollins Children’s Books)
