Ala Youth Media Awards
Not all deserving books bring home ALA awards. Our annual Mind the Gap Awards pay tribute to our favorite books that didn’t win. Here’s how we reviewed our 2025 winners. Tove and the Island with No Address by Lauren Soloy; illus. by the author Primary Tundra 48 pp. 10/24 ...
Not all deserving books bring home ALA awards. The books that didn’t win. Misdirected Tove and the Island with No Address by Lauren Soloy Telephone of the Tree by Alison McGhee Misjudged The Judgment of Yoyo Gold by Isaac Blum Missed the bus The Yellow...
Charles George Esperanza, C. G., has a gift for illustrating stories. His choice of palette paints the plot on canvas. His brushstrokes create characters so real and relatable, you feel like you’re a part of the setting, a character in the landscape. His thoughtful execution of the stories on the...
Jason Reynolds sits on the rooftop of his DC home, overlooking the warm sunset, telling me stories of his late father riding motorcycles, and says, “Build your archive.” He wears all black and hobbles up the winding staircase carrying a smooth bottle of water. He does not walk fast. Everything...
I fell in love with Black history at a very young age. I come from a family with roots in Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, and Detroit. A family of Black cowboys, storytellers, landowners, entrepreneurs, gin makers, community leaders, and doctors. Unfortunately, I didn’t grow up seeing these stories told in the...
Photo: Jeremy Charles. In the early days of expanding her art business, the Tree of Life Studio, into the online frontier, my friend Rebecca Lee Kunz, the 2025 Caldecott Medal winner, did what everyone did circa 2008: she started a blog. It was called An Artful Way, and its banner...
Erin and Sharon at the 2021 launch of Maybe Maybe Marisol Rainey at Hockessin BookShelf in Delaware. Photo courtesy of Sharon Huss Roat. Looking back on 2024, two-time Newbery Medalist Erin Entrada Kelly will tell you it was the worst year of her life. She spent most of it undergoing...
First, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to the Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement Jury for honoring me with this prestigious award. I humbly accept the 2025 Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement. At the same time, I feel a mix of emotions, as my dear friend...
One night, a few very talented illustrators represented by my agency, Gallt and Zacker, had dinner after the Original Art show at the Society of Illustrators. All of them were among the best at what they do in the picture book field. I happened to sit across from Sean Rubin,...
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