The National Book Awards announced their finalists for the 2018 Young People’s Literature award, including two young adult titles: The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo and the graphic novel Hey, Kiddo by Jared J. Krosockza.
The Poet X follows the story of Xiomara, a Dominican teen who finds her voice in slam poetry and pushes back against her restrictive family.
Hey, Kiddo is a graphic memoir that chronicles a childhood full of abandonment and familial abandonment, using the power of art as a means of survival.
The Young People’s Literature finalists also include The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge by M.T. Anderson and Eugene Yelchin, The Truth as Told by Mason Buttle by Leslie Connor, and The Journey of Little Charlie by Christopher Paul Curtis.
There are twenty-five nominees for this year’s National Book Awards in total. Two lifetime achievements will also be awarded: Isabel Allende will be presented with the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, and Doron Weber will receive the Foundation’s Literarian Award for Outstanding Contribution to the American Literary Community.
The award winners will be announced tomorrow, November 14 in New York City.
For more information, visit the National Book Foundation website. Have you read any of the novels nominated for the book awards?
