Michael L. Printz Award
About
Who Was Mike Printz?
When the Newbery Award began , people probably asked, "Who is John Newbery?" After 75 years of Newbery Awards, "everyone knows the name." So that everyone will recognize the name of this new award as quickly as possible, some background information may prove helpful. "Mike," as he was known to his friends and colleagues, was a school librarian at Topeka West (KS) High School for many years and retired from teaching in 1994. Until his untimely death in 1996, he worked as a marketing consultant for Econo-Clad Books.
Mike was active in YALSA and served on the Best Books for Young Adults Committee and the Margaret A. Edwards Award Committee. He had a passion for books and reading. Finding the right book for the right student at the right time was not just a slogan to Mike-he lived it. He also appreciated the authors who wrote books for young adults and demonstrated this by initiating an author-in-residence program at his high school. One of those authors was Chris Crutcher, who became a close friend. Chris recalls the quiet times he spent with Mike talking with him about his vision of young adult literature and its place in kid's lives and says, "The ache I feel [upon hearing of Mike's death] is my wish that he could have accepted for himself what he so readily gave to us, readers and writers alike; a place to stand in the circle of the joy and heartache that is storytelling."
YALSA has created a place, a circle if you will, for Mike to stand and be recognized- that place is the Michael L.Printz Award.
YALSA published A Printz of a Man, a volume of articles written by Mike's friends and colleagues in 1997. Copies were given to the participants at the YALSA preconference, Popular Reading, which was dedicated to Mike, in San Francisco. It is now available on this web site for the reader's information and enjoyment.
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Award Information
| Title | Year | |
|---|---|---|
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2020 winner
2020 - Winner(s) Dig by A.S. King Dutton Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Penguin Young Readers, a division of Penguin Random House |
2020 - Winner(s) |
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2020 honor books
2020 - Honor(s) The Beast Player By Nahoko Uehashi, translated by Cathy Hirano Godwin Books/Henry Holt, an imprint of Macmillan Children's Publishing Group |
2020 - Honor(s) |
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2020 honor books
2020 - Honor(s) Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me By Mariko Tamaki, illustrated by Rosemary Valero-O’Connell First Second/ Macmillan Children's Publishing Group |
2020 - Honor(s) |
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2020 honor books
2020 - Honor(s) Ordinary Hazards: A Memoir By Nikki Grimes Wordsong, an imprint of Boyds Mills & Kane |
2020 - Honor(s) |
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2020 honor books
2020 - Honor(s) Where the World Ends By Geraldine McCaughrean Flatiron Books, an imprint of Macmillan Publishers |
2020 - Honor(s) |
| Title | Year | |
|---|---|---|
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I, Claudia
2019 - Honor(s) |
2019 - Honor(s) |
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The Poet X
2019 - Winner(s) |
2019 - Winner(s) |
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Damsel
2019 - Honor(s) |
2019 - Honor(s) |
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A Heart in a Body in the World
2019 - Honor(s) |
2019 - Honor(s) |
| Title | Year | |
|---|---|---|
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We are okay
2018 - Winner(s) California native Marin, devastated by grief and questioning her reality, plans to spend her winter break in an empty dorm in upstate New York. But... |
2018 - Winner(s) |
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The Hate U Give
2018 - Honor(s) Traumatized after witnessing the violent death of a friend, Starr searches for her voice as she moves between her black neighborhood and predominately white private... |
2018 - Honor(s) |
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Long Way Down
2018 - Honor(s) William Holloman is on the most haunting elevator ride of his life. He’s been urged to break “the rules” he’s grown up with. (No crying... |
2018 - Honor(s) |
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Strange the Dreamer
2018 - Honor(s) In a world of gods, monsters, and nightmares, orphan librarian Lazlo and goddess Sarai find each other in their dreams. Against the backdrop of a... |
2018 - Honor(s) |
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Vincent and Theo: The Van Gogh Brothers
2018 - Honor(s) Inspired by the more than 700 letters the Van Gogh brothers wrote to each other, Heiligman uncovers fresh insights into Vincent’s development as an artist... |
2018 - Honor(s) |
| Title | Year | |
|---|---|---|
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Scythe
2017 - Honor(s) |
2017 - Honor(s) |
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The Passion of Dolssa
2017 - Honor(s) |
2017 - Honor(s) |
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The Sun Is Also a Star
2017 - Honor(s) |
2017 - Honor(s) |
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March: Book Three
2017 - Winner(s) |
2017 - Winner(s) |
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Asking for It
2017 - Honor(s) |
2017 - Honor(s) |
| Title | Year | |
|---|---|---|
|
Bone Gap
2016 - Winner(s) |
2016 - Winner(s) |
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Marcus Sedgwick
2016 - Honor(s) Sedgwick connects four seemingly disparate stories, each of which feature a character haunted by the ever-present shape of a spiral. Spanning time, space, and genre... |
2016 - Honor(s) |
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Ashley Hope Pérez
2016 - Finalist(s) In 1937 East Texas, Mexican American Naomi and African American Wash begin a bittersweet romance. Perez’s beautifully crafted novel is a moving portrayal of both... |
2016 - Finalist(s) |
| Title | Year | |
|---|---|---|
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2014
2014 - Winner(s) By Marcus Sedgwick |
2014 - Winner(s) |
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Eleanor & Park
2014 - Honor(s) By Rainbow Rowell Published by St. Martin’s Griffin (Macmillan) Unlikely love blossoms on the bus when two unique, exceptional souls find strength in each other’s... |
2014 - Honor(s) |
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Kingdom of Little Wounds
2014 - Honor(s) By Susann Cokal Published by Candlewick Press Impeccably researched and darkly disturbing, this complex literary tale reveals the sordid side of palace life in a... |
2014 - Honor(s) |
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MAGGOT MOON
2014 - Honor(s) By Sally Gardner Published by Candlewick Press In Sally Gardner’s explosively original dystopian novel, Standish Treadwell and his grandfather show quiet defiance in the face... |
2014 - Honor(s) |
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Navigating Early
2014 - Honor(s) By Clare Vanderpool Published by Delacorte Books for Young Readers an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House LLC, Penguin Random... |
2014 - Honor(s) |
| Title | Year | |
|---|---|---|
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In Darkness
2013 - Winner(s) |
2013 - Winner(s) |
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Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
2013 - Honor(s) |
2013 - Honor(s) |
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Code Name Verity
2013 - Honor(s) |
2013 - Honor(s) |
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Dodger
2013 - Honor(s) |
2013 - Honor(s) |
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The White Bicycle
2013 - Honor(s) |
2013 - Honor(s) |
| Title | Year | |
|---|---|---|
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Jasper Jones
2012 - Honor(s) |
2012 - Honor(s) |
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Where Things Come Back
2012 - Winner(s) |
2012 - Winner(s) |
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The Returning
2012 - Honor(s) |
2012 - Honor(s) |
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Why We Broke Up
2012 - Honor(s) |
2012 - Honor(s) |
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The Scorpio Races
2012 - Honor(s) |
2012 - Honor(s) |
| Title | Year | |
|---|---|---|
|
Ship Breaker
2011 - Winner(s) |
2011 - Winner(s) |
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Stolen
2011 - Honor(s) |
2011 - Honor(s) |
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Please Ignore Vera Dietz
2011 - Honor(s) |
2011 - Honor(s) |
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Revolver
2011 - Honor(s) |
2011 - Honor(s) |
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Nothing
2011 - Honor(s) |
2011 - Honor(s) |
| Title | Year | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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Punkzilla
2010 - Honor(s) "Punkzilla" is on a mission to see his older brother "P", before "P" dies of cancer. Still buzzing from his last hit of meth, he... |
2010 - Honor(s) | ||
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Tales from the Madman Underground: An Historical Romance, 1973
2010 - Honor(s) In September 1973, as the school year begins in his depressed Ohio town, high-school senior Kurt Shoemaker determines to be "normal," despite his chaotic home... |
2010 - Honor(s) | ||
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Going Bovine
2010 - Winner(s) Sixteen year old slacker, Cameron, sets off on a madcap road trip along with a punk angel, a dwarf sidekick, a yard gnome and a... |
2010 - Winner(s) | ||
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Charles and Emma: The Darwins' Leap of Faith
2010 - Honor(s) "Charles Darwin published 'The origin of species,' his revolutionary treatise on evolution, in 1859. Even today, the theory of evolution creates tension between the scientific... |
2010 - Honor(s) | ||
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The Monstrumologist
2010 - Honor(s) | 2010 - Honor(s) |
| Title | Year | |
|---|---|---|
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Nation
2009 - Honor(s) Pratchett’s trademark humor leavens this epic tale of ravaged islands, shipwrecked nobles and survival. |
2009 - Honor(s) |
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Tender Morsels
2009 - Honor(s) In utterly original language, Lanagan re-imagines “Snow White and Rose Red” and explores the brutality and beauty of life. |
2009 - Honor(s) |
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Jellicoe Road
2009 - Winner(s) Haunted by the past, Taylor Markham reluctantly leads the students of the Jellicoe School in their secret territory wars against the Townies and the Cadets. ... |
2009 - Winner(s) |
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The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves
2009 - Honor(s) Caught in the crossfire of the American Revolution, escaped slave Octavian joins the British army in hopes of finally securing his own freedom. |
2009 - Honor(s) |
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The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks
2009 - Honor(s) Can the old-boy network at her elite boarding school survive the mal-doings of Frankie Landau-Banks? |
2009 - Honor(s) |
| Title | Year | |
|---|---|---|
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The White Darkness
2008 - Winner(s) Fourteen-year-old Symone's exciting vacation to Antarctica turns into a desperate struggle for survival when her uncle's obsessive quest leads them across the frozen wilderness into... |
2008 - Winner(s) |
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Dreamquake: Book Two of the Dreamhunter Duet
2008 - Honor(s) Aided by her family and her creation, Nown, Laura investigates the powerful Regulatory Body's involvement in mysterious disappearances and activities and learns, in the process... |
2008 - Honor(s) |
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One Whole and Perfect Day
2008 - Honor(s) As her irritating family prepares to celebrate her grandfather's eightieth birthday, sixteen-year-old Lily yearns for just one whole perfect day together. |
2008 - Honor(s) |
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Repossessed
2008 - Honor(s) A fallen angel, tired of being unappreciated while doing his pointless, demeaning job, leaves Hell, enters the body of a seventeen-year-old boy, and tries to... |
2008 - Honor(s) |
|
Your Own, Sylvia: A Verse Portrait of Sylvia Plath
2008 - Honor(s) The author interprets the people, events, influences and art that made up the brief life of Sylvia Plath. |
2008 - Honor(s) |
| Title | Year | |
|---|---|---|
| The Book Thief
2007 - Honor(s) Trying to make sense of the horrors of World War II, Death relates the story of Liesel--a young German girl whose book-stealing and story-telling talents... |
2007 - Honor(s) | |
| American Born Chinese
2007 - Winner(s) Alternates three interrelated stories about the problems of young Chinese Americans trying to participate in the popular culture. Presented in comic book format. |
2007 - Winner(s) | |
| The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation; v. 1: The Pox Party
2007 - Honor(s) Various diaries, letters, and other manuscripts chronicle the experiences of Octavian, a young African American, from birth to age sixteen, as he is brought up... |
2007 - Honor(s) | |
| An Abundance of Katherines
2007 - Honor(s) Having been recently dumped for the nineteenth time by a girl named Katherine, recent high school graduate and former child prodigy Colin sets off on... |
2007 - Honor(s) | |
| Surrender
2007 - Honor(s) As he is dying, a twenty-year-old man known as Gabriel recounts his troubled childhood and his strange relationship with a dangerous counterpart named Finnigan. |
2007 - Honor(s) |
| Title | Year | |
|---|---|---|
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A Wreath for Emmett Till
2006 - Honor(s) Presents fifteen interlinked sonnets to pay tribute to Emmitt Till, a fourteen-year-old African American boy who was lynched in Mississippi in 1955 for supposedly whistling... |
2006 - Honor(s) |
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Looking for Alaska
2006 - Winner(s) First-time author John Green writes with intimacy, humor, and insight about a world where intense friendship can lead to devastating loss,” says Committee Chair Michael... |
2006 - Winner(s) |
| Black Juice
2006 - Honor(s) Provides glimpses of the dark side of civilization and the beauty of the human spirit through ten short stories that explore significant moments in people's... |
2006 - Honor(s) | |
| I Am the Messenger
2006 - Honor(s) After capturing a bank robber, nineteen-year-old cab driver Ed Kennedy begins receiving mysterious messages that direct him to addresses where people need help, and he... |
2006 - Honor(s) | |
| John Lennon: All I Want Is the Truth, a Biography
2006 - Honor(s) The story of one of rock's biggest legends, from his birth during a 1940 World War II air raid on Liverpool, through his turbulent childhood... |
2006 - Honor(s) |
| Title | Year | |
|---|---|---|
| how i live now
2005 - Winner(s) To get away from her pregnant stepmother in New York City, fifteen-year-old Daisy goes to England to stay with her aunt and cousins, with whom... |
2005 - Winner(s) | |
| Airborn
2005 - Honor(s) Matt, a young cabin boy aboard an airship, and Kate, a wealthy young girl traveling with her chaperone, team up to search for the existence... |
2005 - Honor(s) | |
| Chanda's Secrets
2005 - Honor(s) A girl's struggle amid the African AIDS pandemic, Chanda, is an astonishingly perceptive girl living in the small city of Bonang, a fictional city in... |
2005 - Honor(s) | |
| Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy
2005 - Honor(s) In 1911, Turner Buckminster hates his new home of Phippsburg, Maine, but things improve when he meets Lizzie Bright Griffin, a girl from a poor... |
2005 - Honor(s) |
| Title | Year | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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Keesha's House
2004 - Honor(s) Seven teens facing such problems as pregnancy, closeted homosexuality, and abuse each describe in poetic forms what caused them to leave home and where they... |
2004 - Honor(s) | ||
| Fat Kid Rules the World
2004 - Honor(s) Seventeen-year-old Troy, depressed, suicidal, and weighing nearly 300 pounds, gets a new perspective on life when a homeless teenager who is a genius on guitar... |
2004 - Honor(s) | |||
| The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things
2004 - Honor(s) Feeling like she does not fit in with the other members of her family, who are all thin, brilliant, and good-looking, fifteen-year-old Virginia tries to... |
2004 - Honor(s) | |||
|
The First Part Last
2004 - Winner(s) Johnson's novel is an extraordinary work in which the realities of fatherhood come slowly but surely to 16 year-old Bobby after the birth of his... |
2004 - Winner(s) | ||
| A Northern Light
2004 - Honor(s) | 2004 - Honor(s) |
| Title | Year | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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Postcards from No Man's Land
2003 - Winner(s) Alternates between two stories--contemporarily, seventeen-year-old Jacob visits a daunting Amsterdam at the request of his English grandmother--and historically, nineteen-year-old Geertrui relates her experience of British... |
2003 - Winner(s) | ||
|
The House of the Scorpion
2003 - Honor(s) | 2003 - Honor(s) | ||
|
My Heartbeat
2003 - Honor(s) As she tries to understand the closeness between her older brother and his best friend, fourteen-year-old Ellen finds her relationship with each of them changing. |
2003 - Honor(s) | ||
| Hole in My Life
2003 - Honor(s) In the summer of 1971, Jack Gantos was an aspiring writer looking for adventure, cash for college tuition, and a way out of a dead-end... |
2003 - Honor(s) |
| Title | Year | |
|---|---|---|
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The Ropemaker
2002 - Honor(s) When the magic that protects their Valley starts to fail, Tilja and her companions journey into the evil Empire to find the ancient magician Faheel... |
2002 - Honor(s) |
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Heart to Heart: New Poems Inspired by Twentieth-Century American Art
2002 - Honor(s) A compilation of poems by Americans writing about American art in the twentieth century, including such writers as Nancy Willard, Jane Yolen, and X.J. Kennedy. |
2002 - Honor(s) |
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Freewill
2002 - Honor(s) A teenager trying to recover from the tragic death of his father and stepmother believes himself to be responsible for the rash of teen suicides... |
2002 - Honor(s) |
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True Believer
2002 - Honor(s) Living in the inner city amidst guns and poverty, fifteen-year-old LaVaughn learns from old and new friends, and inspiring mentors, that life is what you... |
2002 - Honor(s) |
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A Step from Heaven
2002 - Winner(s) "A Step from Heaven" tells the tale of Young Ju as she grows from a toddler in Korea to a high-school graduate in California desperately... |
2002 - Winner(s) |
| Title | Year | |
|---|---|---|
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Kit's Wilderness
2001 - Winner(s) Almond creates a heartbreakingly real world fused with magic realism as he juggles several plot elements with dexterity. He also leads the reader to understanding... |
2001 - Winner(s) |
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Many Stones
2001 - Honor(s) "Many Stones," follows Berry's travels with her estranged father to South Africa, where her sister was murdered while volunteering. Berry learns emotional acceptance of Laura's... |
2001 - Honor(s) |
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The Body of Christopher Creed
2001 - Honor(s) When high school outcast Chris Creed disappears, his popular classmate Victor "Torey" Adams embarks on a mission to decipher Creed's last cryptic email message and... |
2001 - Honor(s) |
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Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging
2001 - Honor(s) "Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging," is the "fabbity fab fab" journal of British 14-year-old Georgia Nicolson who is struggling through the embarrassments of her family... |
2001 - Honor(s) |
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Stuck in Neutral
2001 - Honor(s) In "Stuck in Neutral," the good news is that despite his severe cerebral palsy, Shawn's life is rich and filled with the joys of BBQ... |
2001 - Honor(s) |
| Title | Year | |
|---|---|---|
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Monster
2000 - Winner(s) "Monster," illustrated by Christopher Myers and published by HarperCollins, tells the suspenseful, emotionally charged story of a 16-year-old arrested for murder. |
2000 - Winner(s) |
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Skellig
2000 - Honor(s) A boy discovers a fragile, mysterious winged being sheltered in his garage in "Skellig," edited by Lawrence David, and tries to help coping with anxiety... |
2000 - Honor(s) |
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Speak
2000 - Honor(s) A trauma has silenced Melinda and caused her to be rejected by students in her high school in "Speak." |
2000 - Honor(s) |
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Hard Love
2000 - Honor(s) With funning, fast-paced dialogue and vivid, off-beat characters, this story of love, friendship and a fractured family, is rooted in the contemporary zine scene. |
2000 - Honor(s) |
The Michael L. Printz Award Committee will consider and vote on books published within its assigned calendar year (January 1 to December 31). Publishers, authors, or editors may not nominate their own titles. Both field and Committee nominations will be accepted for books that meet the published criteria. Field nominations must be seconded by a committee member.
Nominations may be accepted from the field up to December 1, and from Committee members up to December 15.
Final selections are made at the Midwinter Meeting during a series of Committee meetings closed to the public. Only Committee members attending the Midwinter Meeting will be allowed to vote. Members can only vote on books they have read.
Please keep in mind the following criteria guiding the Committee's final selection when you are selecting books to nominate:
The Printz Award is selected annually and recognizes the best book written for young adults, based solely on literary merit. It must have been designated by its publisher as being either a young adult book or one published for the age range that YALSA defines as "young adult;" i.e., 12 through 18, and must have been copyrighted and introduced during the assigned calendar year. It may be written by either an American or foreign author. Single authors or multiple authors are accepted. The book may be fiction, nonfiction, poetry, or anthology.
The nomination form is found at: http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/yalsa/booklistsawards/printzaward/nominationform/nominationform.cfm
