Boston Globe - Horn Book Awards: 2010s

As her mother prepares to be a contestant on the 1970s television game show, "The $20,000 Pyramid," a twelve-year-old New York City girl tries to make sense of a series of mysterious notes received from an anonymous source that seems to defy the laws of time and space.

A fictionalized biography of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, who grew up painfully shy, ridiculed by his father, but who became one of the most widely-read poets in the world.

An in-depth look at the civil rights battle in Selma, Alabama.

Two teenagers who are living on the streets and barely getting by become involved in a complicated criminal plot, and make an unexpected connection with each other.

Anna Hibiscus, who lives in Africa with her whole family, loves to splash in the sea and have parties for her aunties, but Anna would love to see snow.

A brilliant strategist for American revolutionaries turns into a traitor.

A look at a range of endangered species and the ways human behavior can either threaten or conserve the amazing animals that share our planet.

Provides an illuminated look at the intriguing creatures that live in the very dark night wood.

A documentary novel about Lewis Michaux, a literacy pioneer of the Civil Rights era.

In 1943, a British fighter plane crashes in Nazi-occupied France & the survivor tells a tale to try to save herself.

A scientist studies elephants in the Namibia desert.

With a supply of yarn that never runs out, Annabelle knits for everyone and everything in town until an evil archduke decides he wants the yarn for himself.

Set over the course of one school year in 1986, this is the story of two star-crossed misfits--smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts, but brave and desperate enough to try.

In a world where dragons and humans coexist in an uneasy truce and dragons can assume human form, Seraphina, whose mother died giving birth to her, grapples with her own identity amid magical secrets and royal scandals, while she struggles to accept and develop her extraordinary musical talents.

Fourteen-year-old Madeleine of Cambridge, England, struggling to cope with poverty and her mother's illness, and fifteen-year-old Elliot of the Kingdom of Cello in a parallel world where colors are villainous and his father is missing, begin exchanging notes through a crack between their worlds and find they can be of great help to each other.

A picture book about America's own Renaissance man--the ever curious, original, and humorous Benjamin Franklin.

A collection of concrete poetry, illustrations, and photographs that shows how young children's constructions, created as they play, are reflected in notable works of architecture from around the world.

Profiles ten notable African American men who worked for racial equality at different times in American history.

Austin Szerba narrates the end of humanity as he and his best friend Robby accidentally unleash an army of giant, unstoppable bugs and uncover the secrets of a decades-old experiment gone terribly wrong.

When young American pilot Rose Justice is captured by Nazis and sent to Ravensbruck, the notorious women's concentration camp, she finds hope in the impossible through the loyalty, bravery, and friendship of her fellow prisoners.

The story of 50 black sailors who stood up for their rights and faced mutiny charges during WWII.

In this exploration of the natural world, readers learn all about the extraordinary animals who share our planet.

An illustrated biography in verse of Josephine Baker, a dancer, singer, comedienne, and early African American artist.

Bored with city life and the proper behavior it requires, Mr. Tiger has a wild idea that leads him to discover his true nature.

A teenage boy struggles with schizophrenia.

A probing look at Russia's last tsar, his family, and their crumbling dynasty.

Also available at 947 R759f (Adult Non-Fiction)

The true story of a group of boy resistance fighters in Denmark after the Nazi invasion.

The author shares her childhood memories and reveals the first sparks that ignited her writing career in free-verse poems about growing up in the North and South.

Very strange noises that keep awakening the Wimbledon family one night have an even stranger source.

Faith Sunderly leads a double life. To most people, she is modest and well mannered—a proper young lady who knows her place. But inside, Faith is burning with questions and curiosity. She keeps sharp watch of her surroundings and, therefore, knows secrets no one suspects her of knowing—like the real reason her family fed Kent to the close-knit island of Vane. And that her father’s death was no accident. In pursuit of revenge and justice for the father she idolizes, Faith hunts through his possessions, where she discovers a strange tree. A tree that bears fruit only when she whispers a lie to it. The fruit, in turn, delivers a hidden truth. The tree might hold the key to her father’s murder. Or, it might lure the murderer directly to Faith herself, for lies—like fires, wild and crackling—quickly take on a life of their own.

Fourteen-year-old Joan Skraggs, over the summer of 1911, pours her heart out into her diary as she seeks to travel from her Pennsylvania farm to become a hired girl in Baltimore.

As Bridge makes her way through seventh grade on Manhattan's Upper West Side with her best friends, curvacious Em, crusader Tab, and a curious new friend--or more than friend--Sherm, she finds the answer she has been seeking since she barely survived an accident at age eight: "What is my purpose?".

The story of Daniel Ellsberg and his decision to steal and publish secret documents about America's involvement in the Vietnam War.

A riveting account of the Siege of Leningrad and the role played by Russian composer Shostakovich and his Leningrad Symphony.

A stirring collection of poems and spirituals, recollects the life of Fannie Lou Hamer, a champion of civil rights.

Thunder Boy Jr. wants a normal name ... one that's all his own. Dad is known as Big Thunder, but Little Thunder doesn't want to share a name.

Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed. Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalil's name. Some cops and the local drug lord try to intimidate Starr and her family. What everyone wants to know is: what really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr. But what Starr does or does not say could upend her community. It could also endanger her life.

Archer has four important role models in his life--his dad, his grandfather, his uncle Paul, and his favorite teacher, Mr. McLeod. When Uncle Paul and Mr. McLeod get married, Archer's sixth-grade year becomes one he'll never forget.

Using original slave auction and plantation estate documents contrasts the monetary value of a slave with the priceless value of life experiences and dreams that a slave owner could never take away.

Xiomara Batista feels unheard and unable to hide in her Harlem neighborhood. Ever since her body grew into curves, she has learned to let her fists and her fierceness do the talking.

Twelve-year-old Candice Miller is spending the summer in Lambert, South Carolina, in the old house that belonged to her grandmother, who died after being dismissed as city manager for having the city tennis courts dug up looking for buried treasure--but when she finds the letter that sent her grandmother on the treasure hunt, she finds herself caught up in the mystery and, with the help of her new friend and fellow book-worm, Brandon, she sets out to find the inheritance, exonerate her grandmother, and expose an injustice once committed against an African American family in Lambert.

Twelve-year-old María Luisa O'Neill-Morales (who really prefers to be called Malú) reluctantly moves with her Mexican-American mother to Chicago and starts seventh grade with a bang--violating the dress code with her punk rock aesthetic and spurning the middle school's most popular girl in favor of starting a band with a group of like-minded weirdos.

A look at the numbers that surround us, big and small, on earth and in outer space.

As a young boy, Bao Phi awoke early, hours before his father's long workday began, to fish on the shores of a small pond in Minneapolis. Unlike many other anglers, Bao and his father fished for food, not recreation. Between hope-filled casts, Bao's father told him about a different pond in their homeland of Vietnam.

Children excitedly discuss the details of their upcoming birthdays.

Caleb Franklin and his younger brother, Bobby Gene, spend an extraordinary summer with their new, older neighbor, Styx Malone, a foster boy from the city.

Modern Native American life as told by an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation.

The graphic novel memoir of Jarrett Krosoczka and the challenges that his mother's heroin addiction brought to his family.

Three siblings who live in a village make their own fun by building a bike. It has a bent bucket seat, bashed tin-can handlebars, and wood-cut wheels--and riding the patchwork bike is the best fun in the whole village.

An illustrated picture book autobiography in which award-winning author Yuyi Morales tells her own immigration story.