The winners of the 2022 Kids’ Book Choice Awards have been announced, with 12 books taking home the prizes for outstanding achievement in young readers’ literature.
The awards, sponsored by the nonprofit Every Child a Reader, are the only prizes for children’s, middle-grade, and young adult books voted on by young readers themselves.
The prize for kindergarten to 2nd grade book of the year went to We All Play: kimêtawânaw, written and illustrated by Julie Flett. The book explores the similarities in playing styles of young animals and human children.
The 3rd to 5th grade book of the year award was given to Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre, written by Carole Boston Weatherford and illustrated by Floyd Cooper, the influential artist who died last year. The book was a winner of the Coretta Scott King Book Award and a finalist for the Kirkus Prize.
Steve Sheinkin was honored with the 6th to 8th grade book of the year for Fallout: Spies, Superbombs, and the Ultimate Cold War Showdown, about tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union in the decades following World War II.
Malinda Lo took home the teen book of the year prize for her National Book Award–winning novel Last Night at the Telegraph Club, about a young lesbian couple in 1954 San Francisco.
The Kids’ Book Choice Awards—formerly the Children’s & Teen Choice Book Awards—were launched in 2008. A full list of this year’s winners is available at the Every Child a Reader website.
Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.
