CCBC Choices 2020
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CCBC Choices 2020 Join the Friends of the CCBC! The Friends underwrite the cost of this annual CCBC Choices publication and support the Cooperative Children’s Book Center in numerous other ways. Please consider joining if you aren’t a member! (See Appendix V for more about the Friends.) Individual Memberships $15 Student/Retiree $25 Personal $35 Household $50 Supporting $100+ Patron $500+ Distinguished Patron Institutional Memberships $75 Honor (2–5 individuals) $150 Award (6–10 individuals) $500 Distinguished (11–15 individuals) $1,000+ Corporate Make check payable to: Friends of the CCBC, Inc. Mail to: Friends of the CCBC, P.O. Box 5189, Madison, WI 53705 (You can also join online at ccbcfriends.org) Name ________________________________________________________ Position ______________________________________________________ Address ______________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________ City ______________________ State ________ Zip Code______________ Telephone (w) _______________________ (h) ______________________ Email _______________________________________________________ (Most communication about Friends news and events is done via listserv at various times throughout the year.) Please do NOT add me to the Friends listserv. CCBC Choices 2020 Kathleen T. Horning Merri V. Lindgren Megan Schliesman Madeline Tyner Cooperative Children’s Book Center School of Education University of Wisconsin–Madison Copyright ©2020, Friends of the CCBC, Inc. ISBN: 978–0–931641–30–5 CCBC Choices 2020 was produced by the office of University Marketing, University of Wisconsin–Madison. Cover design: Lois Ehlert This publication was created by librarians at the Cooperative Children’s Book Center, School of Education, University of Wisconsin–Madison. Funding for the production and printing was provided by the Friends of the CCBC, Inc. CCBC Choices 2020 3 Contents Acknowledgments .............................................4 Introduction ..................................................5 Publishing in 2019 .........................................6 Organization of CCBC Choices 2020 ............................7 The Choices Science, Technology, and the Natural World .....................10 Historical People, Places, and Events ...........................16 Biography, Autobiography, and Memoir ........................26 Contemporary People, Places, and Events .......................29 Understanding Oneself and Others ............................32 The Arts .................................................33 Poetry ..................................................36 Concept Books ...........................................37 Picture Books for Young Children .............................40 Picture Books for School-Age Children .........................52 Books for Beginning Readers .................................64 Books for Newly Independent Readers .........................66 Fiction for Children ........................................68 Fiction for Young Adults ....................................86 Appendices Appendix I: Checklist of Books in CCBC Choices 2020 ............100 Appendix II: Informational Nonfiction Titles in CCBC Choices 2020 . 106 Appendix III: About the CCBC .............................108 Appendix IV: The Charlotte Zolotow Award ....................109 Appendix V: The Friends of the CCBC, Inc. ....................110 Author/Illustrator/Title Index ..................................112 Subject Index ...............................................119 4 CCBC Choices 2020 Acknowledgments The Friends of the CCBC, Inc., underwrites the cost of publishing theCCBC Choices booklet each year. Thanks to them, we can provide copies ofChoices at no cost to Wisconsin librarians, teachers, and others in the state. The Friends are able to make this commitment to the CCBC and to the Wisconsin library and education communities thanks to revenue from memberships, and from their biannual book sale. The dedicated Friends board of directors and book sale coordinators are all volunteers without whom this would not be possible. Thank you to them, and to Friends members in Wisconsin and beyond for your support. (For more information about the Friends of the CCBC, see Appendix V.) Thank you to those who provided critical feedback on one or more specific titles we considered. Participants in our book discussions, held monthly March– December, also provided valuable insights. Thank you also to the staff in Creative Services at University Marketing who worked on this edition of Choices: Angela Barian, Kent Hamele, and Danielle Lawry. The CCBC student staff make so much possible as they handle many day- to-day responsibilities at the library and during the creation of Choices, including proofreading and other critical work in the final days of Choices production. The following individuals worked at the CCBC during 2019 and early 2020: Bailey Anderson, Anjali Beck (2020), Susannah Duncan Gilbert (2019), Alee Hill, Isabelle Ibibo, Melissa Juvinall (2019), Katie Killian, Stacy McCarthy, Alexis Paperman, Heather Phelps (2019), and Charmaine Sprengelmeyer-Podein. The majority of our reading forChoices takes place at home and so, finally, we thank our families for their ongoing patience with piles of books, their tolerance for spontaneous booktalks, and their understanding that we always have another book to read. Kathleen T. Horning, Merri V. Lindgren, Megan Schliesman, and Madeline Tyner Bios of the Choices authors are available on the CCBC web site. CCBC Choices 2020 5 Introduction We create CCBC Choices with Wisconsin school and public librarians and teachers in mind, to call their attention to great books published each year for their classroom teaching, and/or school and public library collections. In its role as a book examination center for the state of Wisconsin, the CCBC received review copies of approximately 3,900 new books for children and young adults published in 2019. This included the majority of the trade books published in English by large corporate publishers in the United States as well as books from some smaller U. S. and Canadian trade publishers, some U. S. educational publishers, and some small-press and independently published books. We don’t read all 3,900 books to create CCBC Choices, but we do read many books—hundreds and hundreds of books—throughout the year with this list in mind. We are looking for books that stand out to us for their literary and artistic quality, and books that offer unique or unusual content, especially when we know there is a need for and interest in books on a topic. We also strive to create a list of books that reflects the diverse identities, lives, and experiences of children and teens today. We are always learning when it comes to evaluating literature reflecting identities beyond our own, and are grateful to the essential work of critics and scholars of color and from First/Native Nations whose insights inform our understanding. This is not to suggest every book in Choices is a reflection of their specific opinions, but rather to acknowledge the importance of ongoing criticism, engagement, and reflection around issues of representation in children’s and young adult literature, and our own ongoing education as white librarians. We also strive to read, learn, and gain insights on representation around other aspects of identity beyond our own experiences. Ultimately, this is a list of consensus among the four of us. Each one of us brings different experiences, tastes, and perspectives to our reading and there are many books one or more of us appreciated that are not in this edition of CCBC Choices. Some are titles we didn’t all agree on; others are books we all liked, just not quite enough to make them a Choice. Additionally, sometimes a book arrived too late for us to consider it for inclusion. Sometimes, we simply missed a great read. But we are thrilled to highlight the 245 titles we have selected. One change we are making with this year’s edition of CCBC Choices is to identify the race/ethnicity of all fictional protagonists in the annotations. (We will not necessarily identify figures in historical fiction based on real people whose identities are known or can be determined.) This means you will see it noted when main characters are white as well as when they are people of color or from First/ Native Nations—which we have been identifying as specifically as possible for years. Our goal is to model moving away from “default white” thinking in which white is considered the “norm” that doesn’t need naming. We have already been noting picture book characters who are “brown-skinned” with no cultural specificity for years, in addition to calling out specific racial/ethnic identities when known. Now we will also indicate when a character is white, or appears white. In the case of fiction, this means sometimes having to make an educated guess when race/ethnicity is never named, and we appreciate the insights of critics, scholars, and book creators of color and from First/Native Nations who have helped inform our thinking about this. 6 Introduction CCBC Choices 2020 Publishing in 2019 As books came into the library, and as we read throughout the year, we made note of several big-picture observations that struck us. • There was a lot of nonfiction, and really good nonfiction at that! We were particularly happy to see an increase in substantial narrative nonfiction. From arresting memoirs (Infinite Hope, Ordinary Hazards, Shout,