LibGuides: American Indian Youth Literature Award: 2022

Winners

Herizon by Daniel W. Vandever, illustrated by Corey Begay

Herizon by Daniel Vandever; Corey Begay (Illustrator)
Call Number: Easy VAN (Easy fiction)
ISBN: 9781737496403
Publication Date: 2021-08-15
Herizon follows the journey of a Diné girl as she helps her grandmother retrieve a flock of sheep. Join in her venture across land and water with the help of a magical scarf that will expand your imagination and transform what you thought possible. The inspiring story celebrates creativity and bravery, while promoting an inclusive future made possible through intergenterational strength and knowledge.

Healer of the Water Monster by Brian Young

Healer of the Water Monster by Brian Young
Call Number: Juv F YOU (Juvenile fiction)
ISBN: 9780062990402
Publication Date: 2021-05-11
Brian Young's (Navajo) debut novel, inspired by Navajo beliefs, features a seemingly ordinary boy who must save the life of a Water Monster-and help his uncle suffering from addiction-by discovering his own bravery and boundless love.

Apple: Skin to the Core by Eric Gansworth

Apple : skin to the core : a memoir in words and pictures by Eric Gansworth
Call Number: YA B GAN-E (Young Adult Biography)
ISBN: 9781646140138
Publication Date: 2020-10-06
The term "Apple" is a slur in Native communities across the country. It's for someone supposedly "red on the outside, white on the inside." Eric Gansworth is telling his story in Apple (Skin to the Core). The story of his family, of Onondaga among Tuscaroras, of Native folks everywhere. From the horrible legacy of the government boarding schools, to a boy watching his siblings leave and return and leave again, to a young man fighting to be an artist who balances multiple worlds. Eric shatters that slur and reclaims it in verse and prose and imagery that truly lives up to the word heartbreaking.

Honors

Diné Bich’eekę Yishłeeh (Diné Bizaad) - Becoming Miss Navajo by Jolyana Begay-Kroupa; designed by Corey Begay
Classified: the Secret Career of Mary Gold Ross, Cherokee Aerospace Engineer by Traci Sorell; illustrated by Natasha Donovan
Learning My Rights with Mousewoman written & illustrated by Morgan Asoyuf
I Sang You Down From the Stars by Tasha Spillet-Sumner; illustrated by Michaela Goade
We Are Still Here!: Native American Truths Everyone Should KNow by Traci Sorell; illustrated by Frané Lessac

Classified : the secret career of Mary Gold Ross, Cherokee aerospace engineer by Traci Sorell; Natasha Donovan (Illustrator)
Call Number: Easy B ROS (Easy biography)
ISBN: 9781541579149
Publication Date: 2021-03-02
Mary Golda Ross designed classified projects for Lockheed Air Corporation as the company's first female engineer. Find out how her passion for math and the Cherokee values she was raised with shaped her life and work.

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I Sang You down from the Stars by Tasha Spillett-Sumner; Michaela Goade (Illustrator)
Call Number: Easy SPI (Easy fiction)
ISBN: 9780316493161
Publication Date: 2021-04-06
A Native American woman describes how she loved her child before it was born and, throughout her pregnancy, gathered a bundle of gifts to welcome the newborn.

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We Are Still Here! : Native American truths everyone should know by Traci Sorell; Frane Lessac (Illustrator)
Call Number: Juv 973.04 SOR (Juvenile nonfiction)
ISBN: 9781623541927
Publication Date: 2021-04-20
Too often, Native American history is treated as a finished chapter instead of relevant and ongoing. This companion book to the award-winning We Are Grateful: Otsaliheliga offers readers everything they never learned in school about Native American people's past, present, and future. Precise, lyrical writing presents topics including: forced assimilation (such as boarding schools), land allotment and Native tribal reorganization, termination (the US government not recognizing tribes as nations), Native urban relocation (from reservations), self-determination (tribal self-empowerment), Native civil rights, the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), religious freedom, economic development (including casino development), Native language revival efforts, cultural persistence, and nationhood.

Ella Cara Deloria: Dakota Language Protector by Diane Wilson
Indigenous Peoples' Day by Katrina M. Phillips
The Used-to-Be Best Friend (Jo Jo Makoons #1) by Dawn Quigley
Peggy Flanagan: Ogimaa Kwe, Lieutenant Governor by Jessica Engelking
The Sea in Winter by Christine Day

Ella Cara Deloria : Dakota language protector by Diane Wilson
Call Number: Juv B DEL (Juvenile biography)
ISBN: 9781634894456
Publication Date: 2021-12-17
Ella Cara Deloria loved to listen to her family tell stories in the Dakota language. She recorded many American Indian peoples' stories and languages and shared them with everyone. She helped protect her people's language for future generations and also wrote stories of her own. Her story is a Minnesota Native American life.

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Indigenous Peoples' Day (Traditions & celebrations) by Katrina M. Phillips
Call Number: Juv 394.264 PHI (Juvenile nonfiction)
ISBN: 9781663926401
Publication Date: 2021-08-01
Indigenous Peoples' Day is about celebrating! The second Monday in October is a day to honor Native American people, their histories, and cultures. People mark the day with food, dancing, and songs. Readers will discover how a shared holiday can have multiple traditions and be celebrated in all sorts of ways.

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Jo Jo Makoons: the Used-To-Be Best Friend by Dawn Quigley; Tara Audibert (Illustrator)
Call Number: Juv F QUI M1 (Juvenile fiction)
ISBN: 9780063015388
Publication Date: 2021-05-11
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 friends. Because Fern, her best friend at school, may not want to be friends anymore.

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Peggy Flanagan : Ogimaa Kwe, Lieutenant Governor by Jessica Engelking
Call Number: Juv B FLA (Juvenile biography)
ISBN: 9781634894463
Publication Date: 2021-11-09
Peggy Flanagan is the Lieutenant Governor of Minnesota. This is the second-highest office in the state. She is the first Native woman to hold such a high elected statewide office in the United States. Her whole life she knew that the school system doesn't tell American Indian stories in a true way. Peggy is working hard to change how Native peoples' stories are told and to make life better for all Minnesotans. Her story is a Minnesota Native American life.

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The Sea in Winter by Christine Day
Call Number: Juv F DAY (Juvenile fiction)
ISBN: 9780062872043
Publication Date: 2021-01-05
After an injury sidelines her dreams of becoming a ballet star, Maisie is not excited for her blended family's midwinter road trip along the coast, near the Makah community where her mother grew up.

Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger
Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley
Hunting by Stars by Cheri Dimaline
Notable Native People: 50 Indigenous Leaders, Dreamers, and Changemakers from Past and Present by Adrienne Keene
Soldiers Unknown by Chag Lowry

Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger; Rovina Cai (Illustrator)
Call Number: YA F LIT-D (Juvenile fiction)
ISBN: 9781646140053
Publication Date: 2020-08-25
Imagine an America very similar to our own. It's got homework, best friends, and pistachio ice cream. There are some differences. This America has been shaped dramatically by the magic, monsters, knowledge, and legends of its peoples, those Indigenous and those not. Some of these forces are charmingly everyday, like the ability to make an orb of light appear or travel across the world through rings of fungi. But other forces are less charming and should never see the light of day. Seventeen-year-old Elatsoe ("Ellie" for short) lives in this slightly stranger America. She can raise the ghosts of dead animals, a skill passed down through generations of her Lipan Apache family. Her beloved cousin has just been murdered, in a town that wants no prying eyes. But she is going to do more than pry. The picture-perfect faðcade of Willowbee masks gruesome secrets, and she will rely on her wits, skills, and friends to tear off the mask and protect her family

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Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley
Call Number: YA F BOU-A (Young adult fiction)
ISBN: 9781250766564
Publication Date: 2021-03-16
Daunis Fontaine has never quite fit in, either in her hometown or on the nearby Ojibwe reservation. She dreams of college, but when her family is struck by tragedy she puts her future on hold to care for her fragile mother. The only bright spot is meeting Jamie, a new recruit on her brother Levi's hockey team. When Daunis witnesses a shocking murder, she reluctantly agrees to go undercover, drawing on her knowledge of chemistry and Ojibwe traditional medicine to track down the source of a new drug. How far will she go to protect her community, if it threatens to tear apart the only world she's ever known?

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Hunting by Stars (Marrow Thieves Novel #2) by Cherie Dimaline
Call Number: YA F DIM M2 (Young adult fiction)
ISBN: 9781419753473
Publication Date: 2021-10-19
French has been captured by the Recruiters, confined to one of the infamous residential schools, where the government extracts the marrow of Indigenous people in order to steal the ability to dream, and where the captured are programmed to betray others of their kind, something which he discovers has been done to his brother; meanwhile the other survivors, his found family, are hunting for him, determined to rescue him--and French has to decide just how much, and whom, he is willing to sacrifice to survive and be reunited with Rose and the others.

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Notable Native People by Adrienne Keene; Ciara Sana (Illustrator)
Call Number: YA 920 KEE-A (Young adult nonfiction)
ISBN: 9781984857941
Publication Date: 2021-10-19
An accessible and educational illustrated book profiling 50 notable American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian people, from NBA star Kyrie Irving of the Standing Rock Lakota to Wilma Mankiller, the first female principal chief of the Cherokee Nation. Celebrate the lives, stories, and contributions of Indigenous artists, activists, scientists, athletes, and other changemakers in this illustrated collection. Also offers accessible primers on important Indigenous issues, from the legacy of colonialism and cultural appropriation to food sovereignty, land and water rights, and more. An indispensable read for people of all backgrounds seeking to learn about Native American heritage, histories, and cultures, Notable Native People will educate and inspire readers of all ages.

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Soldiers Unknown by Chag Lowry; Rahsan Ekedal (Illustrator)
Call Number: YA 355.008 LOW-C (Young adult nonfiction)
ISBN: 9781942279280
Publication Date: 2019-07-31
Based on the true-life story of Yurok men called to serve in World War I, this story follows three cousins as they struggle with being combat soldiers on the Western Front.

American Indian Youth Literature Award

Winners & Honor Books (2022)

Winners

Herizon by Daniel W. Vandever, illustrated by Corey Begay

Healer of the Water Monster by Brian Young

Apple: Skin to the Core by Eric Gansworth

Honors

Diné Bich’eekę Yishłeeh (Diné Bizaad) - Becoming Miss Navajo by Jolyana Begay-Kroupa; designed by Corey Begay

Classified: the Secret Career of Mary Gold Ross, Cherokee Aerospace Engineer by Traci Sorell; illustrated by Natasha Donovan

Learning My Rights with Mousewoman written & illustrated by Morgan Asoyuf

I Sang You Down From the Stars by Tasha Spillet-Sumner; illustrated by Michaela Goade

We Are Still Here!: Native American Truths Everyone Should KNow by Traci Sorell; illustrated by Frané Lessac

Ella Cara Deloria: Dakota Language Protector by Diane Wilson

Indigenous Peoples' Day by Katrina M. Phillips

The Used-to-Be Best Friend (Jo Jo Makoons #1) by Dawn Quigley

Peggy Flanagan: Ogimaa Kwe, Lieutenant Governor by Jessica Engelking

The Sea in Winter by Christine Day

Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger

Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley

Hunting by Stars by Cheri Dimaline

Notable Native People: 50 Indigenous Leaders, Dreamers, and Changemakers from Past and Present by Adrienne Keene

Soldiers Unknown by Chag Lowry