LibraryAware Web 2025 Children's Award Winners

Check out these fantastic award winners and honor

books for children!

Chooch Helped
by Andrea L. Rogers

Sissy's younger brother, Chooch, isn't a baby anymore. They just celebrated his second birthday, after all. But no matter what Chooch does -- even if he's messing something up! Which is basically all the time! -- their parents say he's just "helping." Sissy feels that Chooch can get away with anything! When Elisi paints a mural, Chooch helps. When Edutsi makes grape dumplings, Chooch helps. When Oginalii gigs for crawdads, Chooch helps. When Sissy tries to make a clay pot, Chooch helps . . ."Hlesdi!" Sissy yells. Quit it! And Chooch bursts into tears. What follows is a tender family moment that will resonate with anyone who has welcomed a new little one to the fold. Chooch Helped is a universal story of an older sibling learning to make space for a new child, told with grace by Andrea L. Rogers and stunning art from Rebecca Lee Kunz showing one Cherokee family practicing their cultural traditions.

The first state of being
by Erin Entrada Kelly

When Ridge, a time-traveling teenager from the future, gets trapped in 1999, he befriends Michael, a lonely twelve-year-old boy, changing the course of their lives forever

Home in a lunchbox
by Cherry Mo

Moving from Hong Kong to America, Jun, who only knows a few words of English, finds her new school foreign and frightening, but when she opens her lunchbox to find her favorite meals, she realizes home isn't so far away after all.

My daddy is a cowboy
by Stephanie Seales

While taking an early morning horseback ride with her father around their city, a young girl is regaled with cowboy stories filled with fun, community, friendship, discovery and pride and, feeling seen in a new way, discovers that she, too, is a cowboy.

Noodles on a bicycle
by Kyo Maclear

In this fast-paced historical picture book about Tokyo's bicycle food deliverers, children watch the demae?—?delivery men?—?set off to deliver steaming trays of noodles to hungry customers all over the city and want to be them, practicing with bowls of wobbling water stacked on trays.

Up, up, ever up! : Junko Tabei : a life in the mountains
by Anita Yasuda

This exhilarating picture book biography about the first woman to summit Mount Everest follows Junko Tabei who, despite many obstacles, climbed step by step to reach her goal and then took on a new challenge: protecting the wild spaces she loved for future generations.

Across so many seas
by Ruth Behar

Spanning over 500 years, this epic novel tells the stories of four girls from different generations of a Jewish family who are united by a love of music and poetry, a desire to belong and to matter, and their longing for a home where all are welcome.

Magnolia Wu unfolds it all
by Chanel Miller

A self-proclaimed sock detective inside her parents' New York City laundromat, 10-year-old Magnolia Wu and Iris, a new friend from California, set off across the city to solve the mystery of each missing sock, meeting people and uncovering the unimaginable along the way.

Girls like her
by Melanie Sumrow

Told through a collection of letters, meeting notes, news articles and court transcripts, this unflinching story follows 15-year-old homeless teen Ruby, who is accused of murdering a wealthy businessman and must make desperate choices to prove her innocence with the help of her state-appointed caseworker.

You are brave : a book about trying new things
by Margaret O'Hair

Inspiring and inclusive, this timely book from the Down syndrome advocate and viral sensation helps readers learn their own self-worth and encourages them to stick up for themselves and others, try new things and show the world how brave they are.