24 Mar Awards for Children’s Books
What on earth are all these awards?!
There are so many different awards for children’s books. There are more than this post will even cover! Let’s dive into two of the oldest awards. The awards we’ll look at today are the Newbery Medal, and the Caldecott Medal.
The Newbery Medal
The Newbery Medal goes to books that are an outstanding contribution to children’s literature by an American author. For this award, “children’s literature” is literature for children up to age 14. These are awarded yearly and go to books that were published in the last year.
The runner-ups for this medal are also honored and are referred to as Newbery Honor Books. The books that receive the Medal usually will have a golden seal with the Newbery Medal seal on it. The Honor Books have a similar seal in silver. This award is usually presented to middle grade books, but sometimes is presented to other children’s book types.
Recent winners are All the Blues in the Sky by Renee Watson (2026), The First State of Being by Erin Entada Kelly (2025), The Eyes and the Impossible by Dave Eggers (2024), Freewater by Amina Luqman-Dawson (2023), The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera (2022), and When You Trap a Tiger by Tae Keller (2021).
The Caldecott Medal
The Caldecott Medal is awarded for books with outstanding illustrations. This award usually ends up going to…you guessed it, picture books!
For many of these winners, not only do they have detailed illustrations, but the illustrations impact and tell the story. The Caldecott award also has honor books that get acknowledged for their contributions as well. Once again, winners have a gold seal and honor books have silver seals.
Recent winners of the Caldecott award are Fireworks by Cátia Chien (2026), Chooch Helped by Rebecca Lee Kunz (2025), Big by Vashiti Harrison (2024), Hot Dog by Doug Salati (2023), Watercress by Jason Chin (2022), and We Are Water Protectors by Michaela Goade.
For more information on these awards and others visit https://www.ala.org/alsc/awardsgrants/bookmedia or stop by our desk!
Written by Hope M., Youth Services Library Assistant
