Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo won the Teen Choice Book Award. Picking up right where Six of Crows left off, Crooked Kingdom follows Kaz Brekker and his crew as they return to Ketterdam having pulled off an impossible heist. But instead of divvying up their reward, they’re right back to fighting for their lives.
Gene Luen Yang, the Library of Congress National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, announced the winners of the Children’s & Teen Choice Book Awards at BookExpo 2017.
While the win is an honor and certainly something to celebrate in it’s own right, there’s another dimension that makes this win extra special: the representation.
Bardugo’s Crooked Kingdom is one of, if not the most, inclusive YA books to win this award. Among Kaz and his crew, there’s Inej, a young Suli woman who is described as brown, as well as a survivor of sex trafficking; Jesper, a young bisexual black man; Waylan, who is attracted to other guys; and Kaz, who has chronic pain, a limp from an old injury and must use a cane to get around, and also suffers from PTSD.
Crooked Kingdom beat out Sarah J Maas’ A Court of Mist and Fury, Kiera Cass’ The Crown, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and The Curse Child: Parts 1 and 2, Nicola Yoon’s The Sun Is Also a Star, Marieke Nijkamp’s This Is Where it Ends, and Sabaa Tahir’s A Torch Against the Night.
