Barnes & Noble has announced the winners of its annual Children’s & YA Book Awards.
The Swifts: A Dictionary of Scoundrels, written by Beth Lincoln and illustrated by Claire Powell, was named the overall winner of the awards. It also won in the young reader category.
Lincoln and Powell’s book follows Shenanigan Swift, a young girl from an odd family who is determined to find out the killer of her Arch-Aunt Schadenfreude. In a starred review, a critic for Kirkus praised the book as “an absolutely delightful debut with heartwarming character growth and a clever, genre-savvy country-house mystery.”
The picture books category winner was How To Eat a Book, written and illustrated by the husband-and-wife team known as Mrs. and Mr. MacLeod. The book follows a group of children who set out to eat books but find themselves devoured by the books instead.
Judy I. Lin took home the young adult prize for A Magic Steeped in Poison, a fantasy novel about a young woman who tries to save her sister by entering a tea-making competition.
B&N CEO James Daunt praised the winning books as “truly extraordinary.”
“In The Swifts, Beth Lincoln’s unparalleled wordsmithing and wit, complemented by Claire Powell’s sensational artwork, thrilled our booksellers, as surely it will readers for generations to come,” Daunt said.
This is the third year for the Barnes & Noble Children’s & Young Adult Book Awards. Previous winners include Knight Owl by Christopher Denise and Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley.
Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.
