American Indian Youth Literature Award winners and honors

Excellent writing and illustration by Native Americans and Indigenous peoples of North America, showing Native people in their full humanity.

Showing 1 - 3 of 3  There are a total of 93 valid entries on the list.
Book cover for "The used-to-be best friend"
Series:
Jo Jo volume 1.
Notes:
2022 Middle School honor
Description:
Jo Jo Makoons Azure is a spirited seven-year-old who moves through the world a little differently than anyone else on her Ojibwe reservation. It always seems like her mom, her kokum (grandma), and her teacher have a lot to learn--about how good Jo Jo is at cleaning up, what makes a good rhyme, and what it means to be friendly. Even though Jo Jo loves her #1 best friend Mimi (who is a cat), she's worried that she needs to figure out how to make more...
Book cover for "At the mountain's base"
Notes:
2020 Picture Book honor
Description:
A family, separated by duty and distance, waits for a loved one to return home in this lyrical picture book celebrating the bonds of a Cherokee family and the bravery of history-making women pilots. At the mountain's base sits a cabin under an old hickory tree. And in that cabin lives a family — loving, weaving, cooking, and singing. The strength in their song sustains them through trials on the ground and in the sky, as they wait for their loved...
Book cover for "The birchbark house"
Series:
Birchbark house volume 1.
Notes:
2006 Middle School winner
Description:
This National Book Award finalist by Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Louise Erdrich is the first installment in an essential nine-book series chronicling 100 years in the life of one Ojibwe family, and includes beautiful interior black-and-white artwork done by the author. She was named Omakayas, or Little Frog, because her first step was a hop. Omakayas and her family live on an island in Lake Superior. Though there are growing numbers of white people...