Michael L. Printz Award

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The Michael L. Printz Award is an award for a book that exemplifies literary excellence in young adult literature.

About

Year Began: 2000

Who Was Mike Printz?

When the Newbery Award began , people probably asked, "Who is John Newbery?" After 75 years of Newbery Awards, "everyone knows the name." So that everyone will recognize the name of this new award as quickly as possible, some background information may prove helpful. "Mike," as he was known to his friends and colleagues, was a school librarian at Topeka West (KS) High School for many years and retired from teaching in 1994. Until his untimely death in 1996, he worked as a marketing consultant for Econo-Clad Books.

Mike was active in YALSA and served on the Best Books for Young Adults Committee and the Margaret A. Edwards Award Committee. He had a passion for books and reading. Finding the right book for the right student at the right time was not just a slogan to Mike-he lived it. He also appreciated the authors who wrote books for young adults and demonstrated this by initiating an author-in-residence program at his high school. One of those authors was Chris Crutcher, who became a close friend. Chris recalls the quiet times he spent with Mike talking with him about his vision of young adult literature and its place in kid's lives and says, "The ache I feel [upon hearing of Mike's death] is my wish that he could have accepted for himself what he so readily gave to us, readers and writers alike; a place to stand in the circle of the joy and heartache that is storytelling."

YALSA has created a place, a circle if you will, for Mike to stand and be recognized- that place is the Michael L.Printz Award.

YALSA published A Printz of a Man, a volume of articles written by Mike's friends and colleagues in 1997. Copies were given to the participants at the YALSA preconference, Popular Reading, which was dedicated to Mike, in San Francisco. It is now available on this web site for the reader's information and enjoyment.

Administered by:

Categories:

Details

Frequency: Annual

Next Deadline

December 30, 2009

Sponsors:

Award Information

	Title	Year
	2020 winner 2020 - Winner(s) Dig by A.S. King Dutton Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Penguin Young Readers, a division of Penguin Random House	2020 - Winner(s)
	2020 honor books 2020 - Honor(s) The Beast Player By Nahoko Uehashi, translated by Cathy Hirano Godwin Books/Henry Holt, an imprint of Macmillan Children's Publishing Group	2020 - Honor(s)
	2020 honor books 2020 - Honor(s) Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me By Mariko Tamaki, illustrated by Rosemary Valero-O’Connell First Second/ Macmillan Children's Publishing Group	2020 - Honor(s)
	2020 honor books 2020 - Honor(s) Ordinary Hazards: A Memoir By Nikki Grimes Wordsong, an imprint of Boyds Mills & Kane	2020 - Honor(s)
	2020 honor books 2020 - Honor(s) Where the World Ends By Geraldine McCaughrean Flatiron Books, an imprint of Macmillan Publishers	2020 - Honor(s)

	Title	Year
	The Poet X 2019 - Winner(s)	2019 - Winner(s)
	Damsel 2019 - Honor(s)	2019 - Honor(s)
	A Heart in a Body in the World 2019 - Honor(s)	2019 - Honor(s)
	I, Claudia 2019 - Honor(s)	2019 - Honor(s)

	Title	Year
	We are okay 2018 - Winner(s) California native Marin, devastated by grief and questioning her reality, plans to spend her winter break in an empty dorm in upstate New York. But...	2018 - Winner(s)
	The Hate U Give 2018 - Honor(s) Traumatized after witnessing the violent death of a friend, Starr searches for her voice as she moves between her black neighborhood and predominately white private...	2018 - Honor(s)
	Long Way Down 2018 - Honor(s) William Holloman is on the most haunting elevator ride of his life. He’s been urged to break “the rules” he’s grown up with. (No crying...	2018 - Honor(s)
	Strange the Dreamer 2018 - Honor(s) In a world of gods, monsters, and nightmares, orphan librarian Lazlo and goddess Sarai find each other in their dreams. Against the backdrop of a...	2018 - Honor(s)
	Vincent and Theo: The Van Gogh Brothers 2018 - Honor(s) Inspired by the more than 700 letters the Van Gogh brothers wrote to each other, Heiligman uncovers fresh insights into Vincent’s development as an artist...	2018 - Honor(s)

	Title	Year
	March: Book Three 2017 - Winner(s)	2017 - Winner(s)
	Asking for It 2017 - Honor(s)	2017 - Honor(s)
	Scythe 2017 - Honor(s)	2017 - Honor(s)
	The Passion of Dolssa 2017 - Honor(s)	2017 - Honor(s)
	The Sun Is Also a Star 2017 - Honor(s)	2017 - Honor(s)

	Title	Year
	Bone Gap 2016 - Winner(s)	2016 - Winner(s)
	Marcus Sedgwick 2016 - Honor(s) Sedgwick connects four seemingly disparate stories, each of which feature a character haunted by the ever-present shape of a spiral. Spanning time, space, and genre...	2016 - Honor(s)
	Ashley Hope Pérez 2016 - Finalist(s) In 1937 East Texas, Mexican American Naomi and African American Wash begin a bittersweet romance. Perez’s beautifully crafted novel is a moving portrayal of both...	2016 - Finalist(s)

Title

Year

Bone Gap

2016 - Winner(s)

Marcus Sedgwick

2016 - Honor(s)

Sedgwick connects four seemingly disparate stories, each of which feature a character haunted by the ever-present shape of a spiral. Spanning time, space, and genre...

2016 - Honor(s)

Ashley Hope Pérez

2016 - Finalist(s)

In 1937 East Texas, Mexican American Naomi and African American Wash begin a bittersweet romance. Perez’s beautifully crafted novel is a moving portrayal of both...

2016 - Finalist(s)

	Title	Year
	2014 2014 - Winner(s) By Marcus Sedgwick Published by Roaring Brook Press, an imprint of Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group Doomed love circles back through the centuries in a series...	2014 - Winner(s)
	Eleanor & Park 2014 - Honor(s) By Rainbow Rowell Published by St. Martin’s Griffin (Macmillan) Unlikely love blossoms on the bus when two unique, exceptional souls find strength in each other’s...	2014 - Honor(s)
	Kingdom of Little Wounds 2014 - Honor(s) By Susann Cokal Published by Candlewick Press Impeccably researched and darkly disturbing, this complex literary tale reveals the sordid side of palace life in a...	2014 - Honor(s)
	MAGGOT MOON 2014 - Honor(s) By Sally Gardner Published by Candlewick Press In Sally Gardner’s explosively original dystopian novel, Standish Treadwell and his grandfather show quiet defiance in the face...	2014 - Honor(s)
	Navigating Early 2014 - Honor(s) By Clare Vanderpool Published by Delacorte Books for Young Readers an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House LLC, Penguin Random...	2014 - Honor(s)

	Title	Year
	Code Name Verity 2013 - Honor(s)	2013 - Honor(s)
	Dodger 2013 - Honor(s)	2013 - Honor(s)
	The White Bicycle 2013 - Honor(s)	2013 - Honor(s)
	In Darkness 2013 - Winner(s)	2013 - Winner(s)
	Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe 2013 - Honor(s)	2013 - Honor(s)

	Title	Year
	Jasper Jones 2012 - Honor(s)	2012 - Honor(s)
	Where Things Come Back 2012 - Winner(s)	2012 - Winner(s)
	The Returning 2012 - Honor(s)	2012 - Honor(s)
	Why We Broke Up 2012 - Honor(s)	2012 - Honor(s)
	The Scorpio Races 2012 - Honor(s)	2012 - Honor(s)

	Title	Year
	Ship Breaker 2011 - Winner(s)	2011 - Winner(s)
	Stolen 2011 - Honor(s)	2011 - Honor(s)
	Please Ignore Vera Dietz 2011 - Honor(s)	2011 - Honor(s)
	Revolver 2011 - Honor(s)	2011 - Honor(s)
	Nothing 2011 - Honor(s)	2011 - Honor(s)

In 1888, twelve-year-old Will Henry chronicles his apprenticeship with Dr. Warthrop, a New Escientist who hunts and studies real-life monsters, as they discover...

Title	Year
Charles and Emma: The Darwins' Leap of Faith 2010 - Honor(s) "Charles Darwin published 'The origin of species,' his revolutionary treatise on evolution, in 1859. Even today, the theory of evolution creates tension between the scientific...	2010 - Honor(s)
The Monstrumologist 2010 - Honor(s)		2010 - Honor(s)
Punkzilla 2010 - Honor(s) "Punkzilla" is on a mission to see his older brother "P", before "P" dies of cancer. Still buzzing from his last hit of meth, he...	2010 - Honor(s)
Tales from the Madman Underground: An Historical Romance, 1973 2010 - Honor(s) In September 1973, as the school year begins in his depressed Ohio town, high-school senior Kurt Shoemaker determines to be "normal," despite his chaotic home...	2010 - Honor(s)
Going Bovine 2010 - Winner(s) Sixteen year old slacker, Cameron, sets off on a madcap road trip along with a punk angel, a dwarf sidekick, a yard gnome and a...	2010 - Winner(s)

	Title	Year
	Jellicoe Road 2009 - Winner(s) Haunted by the past, Taylor Markham reluctantly leads the students of the Jellicoe School in their secret territory wars against the Townies and the Cadets. ...	2009 - Winner(s)
	The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves 2009 - Honor(s) Caught in the crossfire of the American Revolution, escaped slave Octavian joins the British army in hopes of finally securing his own freedom.	2009 - Honor(s)
	The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks 2009 - Honor(s) Can the old-boy network at her elite boarding school survive the mal-doings of Frankie Landau-Banks?	2009 - Honor(s)
	Nation 2009 - Honor(s) Pratchett’s trademark humor leavens this epic tale of ravaged islands, shipwrecked nobles and survival.	2009 - Honor(s)
	Tender Morsels 2009 - Honor(s) In utterly original language, Lanagan re-imagines “Snow White and Rose Red” and explores the brutality and beauty of life.	2009 - Honor(s)

	Title	Year
	The White Darkness 2008 - Winner(s) Fourteen-year-old Symone's exciting vacation to Antarctica turns into a desperate struggle for survival when her uncle's obsessive quest leads them across the frozen wilderness into...	2008 - Winner(s)
	Dreamquake: Book Two of the Dreamhunter Duet 2008 - Honor(s) Aided by her family and her creation, Nown, Laura investigates the powerful Regulatory Body's involvement in mysterious disappearances and activities and learns, in the process...	2008 - Honor(s)
	One Whole and Perfect Day 2008 - Honor(s) As her irritating family prepares to celebrate her grandfather's eightieth birthday, sixteen-year-old Lily yearns for just one whole perfect day together.	2008 - Honor(s)
	Repossessed 2008 - Honor(s) A fallen angel, tired of being unappreciated while doing his pointless, demeaning job, leaves Hell, enters the body of a seventeen-year-old boy, and tries to...	2008 - Honor(s)
	Your Own, Sylvia: A Verse Portrait of Sylvia Plath 2008 - Honor(s) The author interprets the people, events, influences and art that made up the brief life of Sylvia Plath.	2008 - Honor(s)

	Title	Year
	The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation; v. 1: The Pox Party 2007 - Honor(s) Various diaries, letters, and other manuscripts chronicle the experiences of Octavian, a young African American, from birth to age sixteen, as he is brought up...	2007 - Honor(s)
	An Abundance of Katherines 2007 - Honor(s) Having been recently dumped for the nineteenth time by a girl named Katherine, recent high school graduate and former child prodigy Colin sets off on...	2007 - Honor(s)
	Surrender 2007 - Honor(s) As he is dying, a twenty-year-old man known as Gabriel recounts his troubled childhood and his strange relationship with a dangerous counterpart named Finnigan.	2007 - Honor(s)
	The Book Thief 2007 - Honor(s) Trying to make sense of the horrors of World War II, Death relates the story of Liesel--a young German girl whose book-stealing and story-telling talents...	2007 - Honor(s)
	American Born Chinese 2007 - Winner(s) Alternates three interrelated stories about the problems of young Chinese Americans trying to participate in the popular culture. Presented in comic book format.	2007 - Winner(s)

	Title	Year
	Black Juice 2006 - Honor(s) Provides glimpses of the dark side of civilization and the beauty of the human spirit through ten short stories that explore significant moments in people's...	2006 - Honor(s)
	I Am the Messenger 2006 - Honor(s) After capturing a bank robber, nineteen-year-old cab driver Ed Kennedy begins receiving mysterious messages that direct him to addresses where people need help, and he...	2006 - Honor(s)
	John Lennon: All I Want Is the Truth, a Biography 2006 - Honor(s) The story of one of rock's biggest legends, from his birth during a 1940 World War II air raid on Liverpool, through his turbulent childhood...	2006 - Honor(s)
	A Wreath for Emmett Till 2006 - Honor(s) Presents fifteen interlinked sonnets to pay tribute to Emmitt Till, a fourteen-year-old African American boy who was lynched in Mississippi in 1955 for supposedly whistling...	2006 - Honor(s)
	Looking for Alaska 2006 - Winner(s) First-time author John Green writes with intimacy, humor, and insight about a world where intense friendship can lead to devastating loss,” says Committee Chair Michael...	2006 - Winner(s)

	Title	Year
	how i live now 2005 - Winner(s) To get away from her pregnant stepmother in New York City, fifteen-year-old Daisy goes to England to stay with her aunt and cousins, with whom...	2005 - Winner(s)
	Airborn 2005 - Honor(s) Matt, a young cabin boy aboard an airship, and Kate, a wealthy young girl traveling with her chaperone, team up to search for the existence...	2005 - Honor(s)
	Chanda's Secrets 2005 - Honor(s) A girl's struggle amid the African AIDS pandemic, Chanda, is an astonishingly perceptive girl living in the small city of Bonang, a fictional city in...	2005 - Honor(s)
	Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy 2005 - Honor(s) In 1911, Turner Buckminster hates his new home of Phippsburg, Maine, but things improve when he meets Lizzie Bright Griffin, a girl from a poor...	2005 - Honor(s)

In 1906, sixteen-year-old Mattie, determined to attend college and be a writer against the wishes of her father and fiance, takes a job...

Title	Year
The First Part Last 2004 - Winner(s) Johnson's novel is an extraordinary work in which the realities of fatherhood come slowly but surely to 16 year-old Bobby after the birth of his...	2004 - Winner(s)
A Northern Light 2004 - Honor(s)		2004 - Honor(s)
Keesha's House 2004 - Honor(s) Seven teens facing such problems as pregnancy, closeted homosexuality, and abuse each describe in poetic forms what caused them to leave home and where they...	2004 - Honor(s)
Fat Kid Rules the World 2004 - Honor(s) Seventeen-year-old Troy, depressed, suicidal, and weighing nearly 300 pounds, gets a new perspective on life when a homeless teenager who is a genius on guitar...	2004 - Honor(s)
The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things 2004 - Honor(s) Feeling like she does not fit in with the other members of her family, who are all thin, brilliant, and good-looking, fifteen-year-old Virginia tries to...	2004 - Honor(s)

In a future where humans despise clones, Matt enjoys special status as the young clone of El Patro´n, the 142-year-old leader of a...

Title	Year
Postcards from No Man's Land 2003 - Winner(s) Alternates between two stories--contemporarily, seventeen-year-old Jacob visits a daunting Amsterdam at the request of his English grandmother--and historically, nineteen-year-old Geertrui relates her experience of British...	2003 - Winner(s)
The House of the Scorpion 2003 - Honor(s)		2003 - Honor(s)
My Heartbeat 2003 - Honor(s) As she tries to understand the closeness between her older brother and his best friend, fourteen-year-old Ellen finds her relationship with each of them changing.	2003 - Honor(s)
Hole in My Life 2003 - Honor(s) In the summer of 1971, Jack Gantos was an aspiring writer looking for adventure, cash for college tuition, and a way out of a dead-end...	2003 - Honor(s)

	Title	Year
	A Step from Heaven 2002 - Winner(s) "A Step from Heaven" tells the tale of Young Ju as she grows from a toddler in Korea to a high-school graduate in California desperately...	2002 - Winner(s)
	The Ropemaker 2002 - Honor(s) When the magic that protects their Valley starts to fail, Tilja and her companions journey into the evil Empire to find the ancient magician Faheel...	2002 - Honor(s)
	Heart to Heart: New Poems Inspired by Twentieth-Century American Art 2002 - Honor(s) A compilation of poems by Americans writing about American art in the twentieth century, including such writers as Nancy Willard, Jane Yolen, and X.J. Kennedy.	2002 - Honor(s)
	Freewill 2002 - Honor(s) A teenager trying to recover from the tragic death of his father and stepmother believes himself to be responsible for the rash of teen suicides...	2002 - Honor(s)
	True Believer 2002 - Honor(s) Living in the inner city amidst guns and poverty, fifteen-year-old LaVaughn learns from old and new friends, and inspiring mentors, that life is what you...	2002 - Honor(s)

	Title	Year
	Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging 2001 - Honor(s) "Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging," is the "fabbity fab fab" journal of British 14-year-old Georgia Nicolson who is struggling through the embarrassments of her family...	2001 - Honor(s)
	Stuck in Neutral 2001 - Honor(s) In "Stuck in Neutral," the good news is that despite his severe cerebral palsy, Shawn's life is rich and filled with the joys of BBQ...	2001 - Honor(s)
	Kit's Wilderness 2001 - Winner(s) Almond creates a heartbreakingly real world fused with magic realism as he juggles several plot elements with dexterity. He also leads the reader to understanding...	2001 - Winner(s)
	Many Stones 2001 - Honor(s) "Many Stones," follows Berry's travels with her estranged father to South Africa, where her sister was murdered while volunteering. Berry learns emotional acceptance of Laura's...	2001 - Honor(s)
	The Body of Christopher Creed 2001 - Honor(s) When high school outcast Chris Creed disappears, his popular classmate Victor "Torey" Adams embarks on a mission to decipher Creed's last cryptic email message and...	2001 - Honor(s)

	Title	Year
	Monster 2000 - Winner(s) "Monster," illustrated by Christopher Myers and published by HarperCollins, tells the suspenseful, emotionally charged story of a 16-year-old arrested for murder.	2000 - Winner(s)
	Skellig 2000 - Honor(s) A boy discovers a fragile, mysterious winged being sheltered in his garage in "Skellig," edited by Lawrence David, and tries to help coping with anxiety...	2000 - Honor(s)
	Speak 2000 - Honor(s) A trauma has silenced Melinda and caused her to be rejected by students in her high school in "Speak."	2000 - Honor(s)
	Hard Love 2000 - Honor(s) With funning, fast-paced dialogue and vivid, off-beat characters, this story of love, friendship and a fractured family, is rooted in the contemporary zine scene.	2000 - Honor(s)

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About

Who Was Mike Printz?

Award Information

Winner List

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

2001

2000

Application Information

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Committee Information