‘The First State of Being’ and ‘Chooch Helped’ win top children’s book awards

The books The First State of Being and Chooch Helped have won the Newbery and the Caldecott awards, respectively — the biggest honors in children’s literature. The awards were announced Monday morning at the American Library Association’s annual Youth Media Awards.

The First State of Being, by Erin Entrada Kelly, takes place in 1999. It’s about a young kid named Michael Rosario, fretting about the turn of the century, when he meets a time traveler from the future. This is Kelly’s second John Newbery Medal, which honors the most distinguished American children’s book published in a given year. Kelly’s book, Hello, Universe, won the prize in 2018.

Chooch Helped, illustrated by Rebecca Lee Kunz, written by Andrea L. Rogers, won this year’s Randolph Caldecott Medal. The award goes to distinguished artists of American picture books for children. The book is about a young girl named Sissy who gets increasingly frustrated with her 2-year-old younger brother, Chooch. The book received positive reviews when it came out. A review in Kirkus says: “The touching narrative and its universal lesson are brought to life through Kunz’s powerful images, which make stunning use of collage to illustrate the children’s rich familial and cultural webs.”

Dozens of other books and authors were honored Monday morning, too. The Coretta Scott King Book Awards go to outstanding books by African American authors and illustrators. The author award this year went to Jayson Reynolds for his book Twenty-Four Seconds from Now…. And the illustrator award went to C.G. Esperanza for My Daddy is a Cowboy.

The Stonewall Book Awards, which are given to enduring LGBTQIA+ books, were awarded to Lunar Boy by Jes and Cin Wibowo for children’s literature, and Canto Contigo by Jonny Garza Villa for young adult literature.

You can find the full list of winners here.