The top awards for children’s literature in 2024 were announced Monday at the American Library Association’s annual Youth Media Awards. Author Dave Eggers won the John Newbery Medal, which is given to the most distinguished American children’s book published the previous year, for his middle grade book The Eyes and the Impossible, which was illustrated by Shawn Harris. Author and illustrator Vashti Harrison won the Randolph Caldecott Medal for the most distinguished American picture book for children, for her book Big.
In an interview with All Things Considered last May, Eggers said that writing from the voice of a stray dog, as he does in The Eyes and the Impossible, was “the most sort of liberating and joyful kind of writing I’ve ever done.”
Harrison, in her own All Things Considered interview last May, said that the impetus for Big, which follows a little girl growing up, was “to make a story that followed a child on a journey towards self-love.” Both The Eyes and the Impossible and Big were also named as two of NPR’s Books We Love in 2023.
