Caldecott Award Books
This Year's Winner
The 2024 Caldecott Award winner is:
Big by Call Number: Easy SalatiThe illustrator is Vashti Harrison.
This emotional exploration of being big in a world that prizes small is a tender portrayal of how you can stand out and feel invisible at the same time.
This Year's Honor Books
Four honor books were selected this year:
In Every Life by Call Number: Easy FrazeeIllustrated by Marla Frazee.
In every life, there is love and loss, hope and joy, wonder and mystery. Marla Frazee celebrates the moments, feelings, and experiences, both big and small, that make up a life.
The Truth about Dragons by Call Number: Easy LeungIllustrated by Hanna Cha.
The Truth About Dragons follows a young child on a journey guided by his mother's bedtime storytelling. He quests into two very different forests, as his two grandmothers help him discover two different, but equally enchanting, truths about dragons.
There Was a Party for Langston by Call Number: Easy ReynoldsIllustrated by Jerome Pumphrey and Jarrett Pumphrey.
Back in the day, there was a heckuva party, a jam, for a word-making man. The King of Letters. Langston Hughes. His ABCs became drums, bumping jumping thumping like a heart the size of the whole country. They sent some people yelling and others, his word-children, to write their own glory.
Jovita Wore Pants: the Story of a Mexican Freedom Fighter by Call Number: J Bio ValdovinosIllustrated by Molly Mendoza.
The remarkable true story of Jovita Valdovinos, a Mexican revolutionary who disguised herself as a man to fight for her rights!
The Caldecott Award
The Caldecott Award
The Caldecott Medal is awarded annually by the ALA to "the artist most of the most distinguished American picture book for children."
The first Caldecott Medal was awarded in 1938. The Caldecott Medal is an award for the book's illustrator. It was inspired by the Newbery Award, which is given to an author. The medal is named in honor of the 19th century English illustrator Randolph J. Caldecott.
The Caldecott Medal is awarded by the Association for Library Service to Children which is a division of the American Library Association. For more information visit the ALSC webpage for the Caldecott Medal.
Did You Know?
Did You Know?
In 2013 Jon Klassen won the Caldecott Medal for This is Not My Hat. The book Extra Yarn, which Jon Klassen also illustrated, was named a Caldecott Honor book that same year. This is the first time that an illustrator has been mentioned twice in one year.
Marcia Brown and David Wiesner are the most honored illustrators. David Wiesner won three Caldecott Medals in 1992, 2002 & 2007. He has also had three books named as Caldecott Honor books in 1989, 2000 & 2014. But Marica Brown has also won three Caldecott Medals (1955, 1962 & 1983) and she has had six books named as Honor books (1948, 1950, 1951, 1952, 1953 & 1954).
Leo & Diane Dillon are the only illustrators to win a Caldecott Medal two years in a row (1976 & 1977).
Usually the medal goes to just one person, but six times it has been awarded to a husband and wife illustrating team. Check the list to see if you can find which years these teams have won.
Only one book each year can win the Caldecott Medal, but other deserving books can be named "honor" books. Each year at least one book has been named an honor book. Some years as many as five books have been named honor books.
Usually books that win the Caldecott Medal are fairly short, but in 2008 the award went to the illustrated novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret.
The winner of the Caldecott Medal must be a citizen or resident of the United States.
