North Carolina Children’s Book Awards

4/21/2025

Sue Corbin

By now, the devastation in western North Carolina caused by Hurricane Helene in late September 2024 is widely known. People died, homes and businesses were lost, roads and bridges were washed out, and the willfulness of winds and water forever changed the Blue Ridge Parkway. At this writing, six months after the flooding, a fire rages fueled by the trees downed in the storm. Those who have experienced the beauty and people of North Carolina know that the state is populated with welcoming and creative people who value the nature around them and express their appreciation of it and each other through books, songs, and art. This review is dedicated to those people, and especially to the teachers and librarians who keep children reading books, even in the worst of times.

If you are interested in helping recovery efforts, a book titled Spinning Toward the Sun: Essays on Writing, Resilience, and the Creative Life is now available for sale in bookstores and online. All proceeds go to the recovery efforts in and around Asheville, which was especially hard hit. It is filled with wise words by North Carolinian authors such as Allan Wolf and Newbery winners Erin Entrada Kelly and Alicia D. Williams.

The following are reviews of the 2024 picture book and junior book winners of the North Carolina Children's Book Awards, along with reviews of the nominees that came in 2nd and 3rd in the voting. At the end, there is a peek at a few of the 2025 nominated titles. A complete list of the 2024 winners and nominees, as well as the nominees for 2025 and a historical archive, can be found at https://nccba.blogspot.com/.

Picture Book Winner

Negative Cat. Sophie Blackall. 2021. Nancy Paulsen Books.
A young boy who struggles with reading has been granted the gift of a cat on the condition that he read for 20 minutes a day. He can only read out loud, and his classmates make fun of him for it, but he desperately wants a cat, so he gives in. Unfortunately, Max the cat isn't much fun. He doesn't smile at jokes; he doesn't like his food; and he isn't cuddly at all. Only after the boy begins to read aloud in his bedroom does Max come out of his bad moods. As the cat slowly makes his way over to the boy, readers are treated to a magical reading moment during which the power of story is shared between boy and cat. The dialogue is told in narrative and cartoon bubbles. The beginning is reminiscent of Mary Sullivan's Frankie (2017) and Treat (2016) with the use of keywords followed by various punctuation marks that the main characters use to make their wishes known. Also see Lester Laminack's new book A Cat Like That (2025), illustrated by Nicole Wong, for a similar treatment of the marriage of key words, punctuation, and pictures to tell an intricate story. (PreK-Gr 4)

Picture Book Runners Up

Sheepish (Wolf Under Cover). Helen Yoon. 2021. Candlewick.
Like Jon Klassen's books, where the pictures tell a different story than the words, Sheepish (Wolf Under Cover) is about a wolf who dresses up like a sheep and sneaks into the sheep pen. But the sheep are on to him, and they let him play out his ruse, endearing themselves to him until he can't bring himself to eat them anymore. He leaves the pen, creates a few stuffed sheep to display on his mantle, and goes home. Soon, there is a knock at the door, and there are the sheep dressed as wolves who have come to see him because they miss him. He is surprised they knew, but the reader knows all along that he wasn't fooling anyone. (PreK-Gr 4)

Clovis Keeps His Cool. Katelyn Aronson. Illus. by Eve Farb. 2021. Page Street Kids.
Clovis is the proverbial bull in a china shop. Since taking over his granny's store, he has come to find that his former temper outbursts have become more manageable. Whereas once he was a terror around the china, his Granny's adage, "Grace. Grace. What is broken can be replaced," has given him a new perspective on life. Unfortunately, other bulls taunt him because he has lost his tough-guy persona. Clovis keeps his cool until they finally enter the shop and start to break things. At that point, "Clovis was all out of grace." He chases the bullies into an alley and nearly charges them when he hears his granny's voice, admonishing him to choose grace over revenge. This is a humorous story about the seriousness of living a life of forgiveness and acceptance of others, and how we can learn how to resolve differences with strategies other than violence. (PreK-Gr 4)

Junior Book Winner

Invisible: A Graphic Novel. Christina Diaz Gonzalez. Illus. Gabriela Epstein. 2022. Graphix.
On many levels, graphic novel fans and reluctant readers will relate to this wonderfully quirky book. Even those who favor pure text will find themselves captivated by the intertwining of illustrations and words to show the intricacies of human beings, their cultures, their languages, their hopes, and their motivations. Each of the five Latinx characters has a unique story to tell in their own voices that move between fluent and developing Spanish and English. Each has been stereotyped not only by their Latinx backgrounds but also because of the roles they play - athlete, rich kid, genius, loner, tough kid - that don't reveal who they are at all until they begin to explain themselves. Middle schoolers who feel invisible in school for similar reasons will find comfort in the power of telling their own stories. (Gr 3 Up)

Junior Book Runners Up

Dog Squad. Chris Grabenstein. 2021. Random House.
Becoming a hero isn't easy, even when you are playing one on TV. Dog Squad is Fred's favorite show about dogs solving big problems and saving the day. When he is cast on the show to replace the Duke, the injured star, Fred gets to play the hero he's always admired. This novel, with cartoon drawings and program scripts interspersed throughout, keeps readers laughing and crying at the dogs' antics on and off the set. In the end, the doggy actors find that they can be the kinds of dogs they portray in real life as well. The author and illustrator, Chris Grabenstein, is a master at captivating his audience with fast-paced action and pathos for his characters. (Gr 2-6)

Your Place in the Universe. Jason Chin. 2020. Neal Porter Books.
While this book looks like a picture book for young children at first glance, readers will find that the well-researched facts and the theme of understanding who we are in the universe and beyond make for a simply complex nonfiction book that is perfect for STEM education. Jason Chin has created a brilliant book that begins and ends with four 8-year-olds looking through a telescope. Starting with a comparison of the children's average height to that of ostriches, giraffes, redwoods, buildings, and mountains, Chin leads readers to appreciate the immensity of the cosmos by using height, width, the expanse of orbits, and the distance between planets and galaxies. The back matter is rich with information about measurement, astronomy and telescopes, the Earth and the solar system, and the cosmos itself. References to other resources and websites are provided, as well as an author's note on how he created the illustrations and figured the scaled drawings. (Gr 2-6)

A Peek at the 2025 Nominees: Picture Book

Acorn Was a Little Wild. Jen Arena. Illus. Jessica Gibson. 2022. Simon & Schuster.
Little Acorn loves adventure and makes the most of everything that happens to him, including being nibbled by one squirrel and buried in the ground by another. He wasn't happy about being underground, but he made the best of it, only to find that he was growing into an oak tree. The story comes full circle with Little Acorn being a little wild with his friends in the woods. This book invites readers to love life with all its ups and downs because something interesting is always bound to happen. (Prek-Gr 3)

Place Hand Here. Katie Yamasaki. 2022. Norton Young Readers.
A painted hand on the wall of a building in a large city becomes a place where people go to find comfort and connection to people in their lives, both alive and dead, close and far away. Told in poetic language and illustrated in vibrant colors and pastels, Place Hand Here shows readers that all we need to do when we feel lonely for someone is to imagine them, and we will feel their presence. (Prek-Gr 3)

A Peek at the 2025 Nominees: Junior Book

Shine On, Luz Véliz. Rebecca Balcárcel. 2022. Chronicle Books.
Luz and her father are connected by their love of soccer until she sustains a devastating knee injury that threatens to end her future in the game. Her father becomes aloof and sad, and Luz must find something else that she is good at, something she can shine at again. When she discovers coding, her life changes, and she works with her neighbor and her teacher to create a project for the May Fair that will impress everyone, and especially her father. Big changes are on the way for the family, though, when Luz discovers that she has a half sister, Solana from Guatemala, whom her father didn't know about. Solana's mother has died, so she comes to live with the Vélizes, and Luz is angry at the disruption that Solana causes. Suddenly, Luz's father comes alive because now he has someone to speak Spanish with and teach how to play soccer, and Luz is jealous. How the sisters bring the family together is a beautiful story of forgiveness, resilience, and learning how to overcome obstacles that seem insurmountable. (Gr 3-7)

The Fire of Stars: The Life and Brilliance of the Woman Who Discovered What Stars Are Made Of. Kirsten W. Larson. Illus. Katherine Roy. 2023. Chronicle Books.
This biographical book about a woman scientist who broke all the rules is so wonderfully crafted that it must be read at least twice to catch all the beauty of the art and words. The book cover must be removed to take in the expanse of the universe that flows from back to front. End pages are filled with stars, and this is just the beginning of a journey through space and through Cecilia Payne's life as an astrophysicist. Roy's use of pencil, ink, and digital colors is magical as she weaves visions of the cosmos together with illustrations of Payne's struggle to learn what makes stars burn. The sequence of how a star is formed follows the sequence of Cecelia's life with words and pictures acting seamlessly to tell the whole story of stars in the sky and a female superstar on Earth. Teachers are honored in the story as well, because it is a teacher who gives Cecilia the book on astronomy that sets her on her path. The book ends with the question, "Whose will the next discovery be?" Maybe it will be yours. (Gr 2 Up)

Sue Corbin is a long-time member of ILA and the Children’s Literature and Reading SIG. Since retiring from Notre Dame College in Ohio, she can usually be found in the children’s section of Mountain Island Library in Charlotte, NC.

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