The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

Young readers are facing a world of uncertainty right now, and so it is apt that this year’s Blue Ribbon titles are united by the key theme of persistence, a refusal to accept dead ends, failures, or calls for the status quo. The characters in these books are instead harnessing unpredictability to shape their realities, at either a personal or societal level (and sometimes both).

Humor and silliness seemed to be sorely lacking in 2023, so the staff at the Bulletin is delighted that our Blue Ribbons list for the year features a host of joyful, celebratory, and yes, funny, titles. Among our selected picture books, readers will meet a little old lady who reluctantly befriends a group of ghosts, ghouls, mummies, and werewolves. Our fiction section offers up a movie-ready rom-com as well as a middle-grade take on Groundhog Day.

We were lucky this year to see a sizeable increase in the diverse identities and ideas represented in literature for youth, and with that in mind, we couldn’t help but expand our own award list—there were just too many stellar examples of our field’s growing inclusivity. In nonfiction, you’ll find a healthy variety of formats and subjects, from a picture book walk through the Mexihcah’s process of creating amoxtin to a biography of Octavia Butler in evocative concrete poems.

C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien began their legendary fantasies with a shock of instant immersion, not just an invitation to an entirely new, fascinating place but an immediate pull toward something deep into which readers could gleefully dive headlong.

2022 Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction The 2022 Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction goes to Ophie’s Ghosts by Justina Ireland, published by Balzer + Bray. Ophie is twelve when she sees a ghost for the first time: her father’s spirit warns her to leave Georgia with her mother, after he has been murdered by white men.