Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal

About the Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal
The Sibert Award honors the most distinguished informational book published in English in the preceding year for its significant contribution to children’s literature.

Administered by:

Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) logo

2023 Winner(s)

Seen and Unseen: What Dorothea Lange, Toyo Miyatake, and Ansel Adams’s Photographs Reveal About the Japanese American Incarceration

Written by Elizabeth Partridge, illustrated by Lauren Tamaki. Published by Chronicle Books.

In an account that masterfully combines text and illustration, the works of three different photographers are used to showcase and examine the unjust incarceration of Japanese and Japanese Americans during WWII.


2023 Honor(s)

Choosing Brave: How Mamie Till-Mobley and Emmett Till Sparked the Civil Rights Movement

Written by Angela Joy, illustrated by Janelle Washington. Published by Roaring Brook Press, a division of Macmillan Children's Publishing Group

Accompanied by striking cut-paper illustrations, this moving picture book biography illuminates Mamie Till-Mobley’s life and the ways in which the murder of her son affected her activism during the civil rights era. 


A Seed Grows

Written and illustrated by Antoinette Portis. Published by Neal Porter Books, an imprint of Holiday House

The lifecycle of a sunflower from seed to flower and back to seed is presented in minimalistic, lyrical text accompanied by richly textured images of the plant at each stage of development.


Sweet Justice: Georgia Gilmore and the Montgomery Bus Boycott

Written by Mara Rockliff, illustrated by R. Gregory Christie. Published by Random House Studio, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House

Exceptional writing and rich illustrations shed light on everyday civil rights hero Georgia Gilmore in this thoroughly researched picture book biography. 


The Tower of Life: How Yaffa Eliach Rebuilt Her Town in Stories and Photographs

Written by Chana Stiefel, illustrated by Susan Gal. Published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic Inc.

Years after the Holocaust, Yaffa Eliach traveled the world to collect photographs from former members of her destroyed shtetl, which were used to create the Tower of Life memorial exhibit at the U.S. Holocaust Museum.