Award-Winning Readings: National Book Award Nominees and Finalists in Young People’s Literature

Bryan Bliss is the author of We’ll Fly Away, Meet Me Here, and No Parking at the End Times. He holds master’s degrees in theology and fiction and works as a curriculum designer and developer. His nonfiction has been published in Image Journal, along with various other newspapers, magazines, and blogs. We'll Fly Away (Greenwillow Books) is his most recent novel. Luke and Toby have always had each other’s backs. But then one choice—or maybe it is a series of choices—sets them down an irrevocable path. We’ll Fly Away weaves together Luke and Toby’s senior year of high school with letters Luke writes to Toby later—from death row. Tense and emotional, this hard-hitting novel explores family abuse, sex, love, and friendship, and how far people will go to protect those they love.

Eugene Yelchin is a Russian-American artist best known as an illustrator and writer of books for children. Breaking Stalin's Nose, a middle grade novel that he wrote and illustrated received Newbery Honor and has been translated into ten languages. His illustrations for The Rooster Prince of Breslov received a National Jewish Book Award. His middle grade novel The Haunting of Falcon House received the Golden Kite Award. Won Ton, A Cat Tale Told In Haiku that he illustrated received over forty awards. Yelchin received the Society of Children's Books Writers and Illustrators Tomie DePaola Illustration Award. The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge that he co-authored with M.T. Anderson is a finalist for the 2018 National Book Award. His Cold War middle grade thriller Spy Runner will be released in February 2019.

Joy McCullough writes books and plays from her home in the Seattle area, where she lives with her husband and two children. She studied theater at Northwestern University, fell in love with her husband atop a Guatemalan volcano, and now spends her days surrounded by books and kids and chocolate. Her debut novel, Blood Water Paint (Dutton Books for Young Readers), nomainated for the National Book Award in Young People’s Literature, earned four starred reviews and was a Publishers Weekly Flying Start.  By the time she was seventeen, Artemisia did more than grind pigment. She was one of Rome's most talented painters, even if no one knew her name. But Rome in 1610 was a city where men took what they wanted from women, and in the aftermath of rape Artemisia faced another terrible choice: a life of silence or a life of truth, no matter the cost. McCullough weaves Artemisia's heartbreaking story with the stories of the ancient heroines, Susanna and Judith, who become not only the subjects of two of Artemisia's most famous paintings but sources of strength as she battles to paint a woman's timeless truth in the face of unspeakable and all-too-familiar violence.

Vesper Stamper is an author/illustrator living in the Northeast with her husband, filmmaker Ben Stamper and her two children. She has an MFA in Illustration as Visual Essay from School of Visual Arts, NYC. What the Night Sings (Knopf Books for Young Readers) is her most recent book. After losing her family and everything she knew in the Nazi concentration camps, Gerta is finally liberated, only to find herself completely alone. Without her Papa, her music, or even her true identity, she must move past the task of surviving and onto living her life. In the displaced persons camp where she is staying, Gerta meets Lev, a fellow teen survivor who she just might be falling for, despite her feelings for someone else. With a newfound Jewish identity she never knew she had, and a return to the life of music she thought she lost forever, Gerta must choose how to build a new future.