News & Media
ABFYR Celebrates our 2025 ALA Award Winners!
Astra Books for Young Readers and our imprint, Calkins Creek, received several prestigious awards on Monday, January 27 at the Youth Media Awards (YMA) during the LibLearnX conference in Phoenix, AZ! Sponsored by the American Library Association, the YMA’s recognize exceptional books, videos, and other materials for children and teens. Chosen by expert committees of librarians and literature professionals, these awards celebrate creativity and innovation in children’s and young adult literature and media.
Here are our winners!
Call Me Roberto! by Nathalie Alonso and illustrated by Rudy Gutierrez
2025 Robert F. Sibert Honor
BCCB Blue Ribbon
Horn Book Fanfare 2024
NPR’s Books We Love List 2024
NYPL Best Book 2024
Evanston PL’s 101 Great Books for Kids 2024
Chicago Public Library Best of the Best 2024
Here is the inspirational story of Major League Baseball player Roberto Clemente—not Bob—who endured years of racism and discrimination to become one of the greatest baseball players of all time.
★School Library Journal, starred review
★ The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, starred review
★ Publishers Weekly, starred review
★The Horn Book, starred review
Everywhere Beauty is Harlem by Gary Golio and illustrated by E. B. Lewis
2025 Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor
A Shelf Awareness Best Book of the Year
A Kirkus Best Picture Book of the Year
A Kirkus Best Picture Book Biography
A Kirkus Reviews Most Anticipated Book of 2024
The New York Public Library Best Books for Kids 2024 (Top 10)
A child of the Harlem Renaissance and an artistic collaborator of Langston Hughes, Roy DeCarava is an unsung hero of Black history. Convinced that the lives of ordinary Black people deserved to be immortalized and documented in photos, Roy celebrated Black people through his art, a process that the incomparable author Gary Golio and illustrator E. B. Lewis capture in this beautiful picture book.
★Kirkus Reviews, starred review
★ Publishers Weekly, starred review
★ Shelf Awareness, starred review
★ The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, starred review
Shackled by Candy J. Cooper
The New York Public Library Best Books for Teens 2024
2025 YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Finalist
Here is the explosive story of the Kids for Cash scandal in Pennsylvania, a judicial justice miscarriage that sent more than 2,500 children and teens to a for-profit detention center while two judges lined their pockets with cash, as told by Candy J. Cooper, an award-winning journalist and Pulitzer Prize finalist.
Carole Boston Weatherford – Winner of the 2025 Children’s Literature Legacy Award
Author Carole Boston Weatherford is the winner of the 2025 Children’s Literature Legacy Award honoring an author or illustrator, published in the United States, whose books have made a significant and lasting contribution to literature for children. Carole’s books with ABFYR include WHIRLIGIGS, YOU ARE MY PRIDE, and more. Congratulations, Carole!
Read these titles by Carole Boston Weatherford
Whirligigs, illustrated by Edwin Fotheringham
You Are My Pride, illustrated by E. B. Lewis
Becoming Billie Holiday, illustrated by Floyd Cooper
Birmingham, 1963
Sidewalk Chalk, illustrated by Dimitrea Tokunbo
A Negro League Scrapbook, foreword by Buck O’Neil
