Coretta Scott King Book Award Winners 1970 to Present
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The CSK Book Awards seal and award names are owned by the American Library Association.
The Coretta Scott King Awards are presented annually by the American Library Association to honor African-American authors and illustrators who create outstanding books for children and young adults. “… an excellent start on your quest for the best in African-American literature for children.”
The award was established in 1969 to recognize authors. In 1979 it was expanded to include a separate award for illustrators. There are now five categories for book awards; Author, Author Honor, Illustrator, Illustrator Honor, and the John Steptoe Award for New Talent.
These awards are given to commemorate the life and work of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and to honor Mrs. Coretta Scott King for her continuing efforts in working for peace and civil rights issues. In 2015 The Coretta Scott King Awards became part of the Youth Media Awards. Here is a printable list of all the award winning books.
You may learn more about this award at the American Library Association’s website. Also check out our list of Top 100+ Recommended African-American Children’s Books, some are also CSK Award winning titles.
10 Coretta Scott King Award Winning and Honored Books for 2024
Nigeria Jones
by Ibi Zoboi
From Ibi Zoboi, bestselling, award-winning author of American Street and co-author of Punching the Air, comes a bold new YA coming-of-age story, which explores race, feminism, and complicated family dynamics, about a girl whose father is the leader of a Black liberation group. The ideal next read for fans of Roxane Gay, Jacqueline Woodson, and Elizabeth Acevedo.
Warrior Princess. That s what Nigeria Jones s father calls her. He has raised her as part of the Movement, a Black separatist group based in Philadelphia. Nigeria is homeschooled and vegan and participates in traditional rituals to connect her and other kids from the group to their ancestors. But when her mother the perfect matriarch of their Movement disappears, Nigeria s world is upended. She finds herself taking care of her baby brother and stepping into a role she doesn t want.
Nigeria s mother had secrets. She wished for a different life for her children, which includes sending her daughter to a private Quaker school outside of their strict group. Despite her father s disapproval, Nigeria attends the school with her cousin, Kamau, and Sage, who used to be a friend. There, she begins to flourish and expand her universe.
As Nigeria searches for her mother, she starts to uncover a shocking truth. One that will lead her to question everything she thought she knew about her life and her family.
From award-winning author Ibi Zoboi comes a searing, powerful coming-of-age story about discovering who you are in the world and fighting for that person by having the courage to remix the founding tenets of your life to be your own revolution.
Big
by Vashti Harrison, Illustrated by Vashti Harrison
Finalist for the 2023 National Book Award
Measuring almost 12 by 10 inches this big children s book is gorgeous visually, in word, and intent. Troy D. Johnson, Founder of the African American Literature Book Club (AALBC)
A New York Times Bestseller
A Kids Indie Next List Pick
A Publishers Weekly Summer Reading List Pick
An Amazon Best Book of the Month
Praised for acting like a big girl when she is small, as a young girl grows, big becomes a word of criticism, until the girl realizes that she is fine just the way she is.
From a New York Times bestselling and award-winning creator, this deeply moving story shares valuable lessons about fitting in, standing out, and the beauty of joyful acceptance.
Big is the first picture book both written and illustrated by award-winning artist Vashti Harrison. Big traces a child s journey to self-love and shows the power of words to both hurt and heal. With spare text and exquisite illustrations, 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.
How Do You Spell Unfair?: Macnolia Cox and the National Spelling Bee
by Carole Boston Weatherford, Illustrated by Frank Morrison
From a multi-award-winning pair comes a deeply affecting portrait of determination against discrimination: the story of young spelling champion MacNolia Cox.
MacNolia Cox was no ordinary kid.
Her idea of fun was reading the dictionary.
In 1936, eighth grader MacNolia Cox became the first African American to win the Akron, Ohio, spelling bee. And with that win, she was asked to compete at the prestigious National Spelling Bee in Washington, DC, where she and a girl from New Jersey were the first African Americans invited since its founding. She left her home state a celebrity right up there with Ohio s own Joe Louis and Jesse Owens with a military band and a crowd of thousands to see her off at the station. But celebration turned to chill when the train crossed the state line into Maryland, where segregation was the law of the land. Prejudice and discrimination ruled on the train, in the hotel, and, sadly, at the spelling bee itself.
With a brief epilogue recounting MacNolia s further history, How Do You Spell Unfair? is the story of her groundbreaking achievement magnificently told by award-winning creators and frequent picture-book collaborators Carole Boston Weatherford and Frank Morrison.
Kin: Rooted in Hope
by Carole Boston Weatherford, Illustrated by Jeffery Boston Weatherford
A powerful portrait of a Black family tree shaped by enslavement and freedom, rendered in searing poems by acclaimed author Carole Boston Weatherford and stunning art by her son Jeffery Boston Weatherford.
I call their names:
Abram Alice Amey Arianna Antiqua
I call their names:
Isaac Jake James Jenny Jim
Every last one, property of the Lloyds,
the state s preeminent enslavers.
Every last one, with a mind of their own
and a story that ain t yet been told.
Till now.
Carole and Jeffery Boston Weatherford s ancestors are among the founders of Maryland. Their family history there extends more than three hundred years, but as with the genealogical searches of many African Americans with roots in slavery, their family tree can only be traced back five generations before going dark. And so from scraps of history, Carole and Jeffery have conjured the voices of their kin, creating an often painful but ultimately empowering story of who their people were in a breathtaking book that is at once deeply personal yet all too universal.
Carole s poems capture voices ranging from her ancestors to Frederick Douglass to Harriet Tubman to the plantation house and land itself that connects them all, and Jeffery s evocative illustrations help carry the story from the first mention of a forebear listed as property in a 1781 ledger to he and his mother s homegoing trip to Africa in 2016. Shaped by loss, erasure, and ultimate reclamation, this is the story of not only Carole and Jeffery s family, but of countless other Black families in America.
An American Story
by Kwame Alexander, Illustrated by Dare Coulter
New York Times Bestselling author Kwame Alexander pens a powerful picture book that tells the story of American slavery through the voice of a teacher struggling to help her students understand its harrowing history.
From the fireside tales in an African village, through the unspeakable passage across the Atlantic, to the backbreaking work in the fields of the South, this is a story of a people s struggle and strength, horror, and hope. This is the story of American slavery, a story that needs to be told and understood by all of us. A testament to the resilience of the African American community, this book honors what has been and envisions what is to be.
This is a book for those who want to speak the truth.
Holding Her Own: The Exceptional Life of Jackie Ormes
by Traci N. Todd, Illustrated by Shannon Wright
An evocative picture book biography about the prolific life of Jackie Ormes, whose groundbreaking cartoons became some of the first empowering depictions of Black women in America!
Jackie Ormes made history. She was the first Black woman cartoonist to be nationally syndicated in the United States. She was also a journalist, fashionista, philanthropist, and activist, and she used her incredible talent and artistry to bring joy and hope to people everywhere. But in post-World War II America, Black people were still being denied their civil rights, and Jackie found herself in a dilemma: How could her art stay true to her signature "Jackie joy" while remaining honest about the inequalities Black people had been fighting?
Rising stars Traci N. Todd, author of the Coretta Scott King Honor Book Nina: A Story of Nina Simone, and Shannon Wright, co-creator of the bestselling graphic novel Twins, have crafted a gorgeous and heartfelt tribute to the indelible legacy of Jackie Ormes, whose life and work still influences illustrators and cartoonists today.
Big
by Vashti Harrison, Illustrated by Vashti Harrison
Finalist for the 2023 National Book Award
Measuring almost 12 by 10 inches this big children s book is gorgeous visually, in word, and intent. Troy D. Johnson, Founder of the African American Literature Book Club (AALBC)
A New York Times Bestseller
A Kids Indie Next List Pick
A Publishers Weekly Summer Reading List Pick
An Amazon Best Book of the Month
Praised for acting like a big girl when she is small, as a young girl grows, big becomes a word of criticism, until the girl realizes that she is fine just the way she is.
From a New York Times bestselling and award-winning creator, this deeply moving story shares valuable lessons about fitting in, standing out, and the beauty of joyful acceptance.
Big is the first picture book both written and illustrated by award-winning artist Vashti Harrison. Big traces a child s journey to self-love and shows the power of words to both hurt and heal. With spare text and exquisite illustrations, 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.
There Was a Party for Langston
by Jason Reynolds, Illustrated by Jerome Pumphrey and Jarrett Pumphrey
New York Times bestselling and award-winning author Jason Reynolds s debut picture book is a snappy, joyous ode to Word King, literary genius, and glass-ceiling smasher Langston Hughes and the luminaries he inspired.
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.
Maya Angelou, Amiri Baraka, and more came be-bopping to recite poems at their hero s feet at that heckuva party at the Schomberg Library, dancing boom da boom, stepping and stomping, all in praise and love for Langston, world-mending word man. Oh, yeah, there was hoopla in Harlem, for its Renaissance man. A party for Langston.
There Goes the Neighborhood
by Jade Adia
A raised fist against the destructive forces of gentrification and a love letter to communities of color everywhere, Jade Adia s unforgettable debut tells the darkly hilarious story of three best friends willing to do whatever it takes to stay together.
The gang is fake, but the fear is real.
Rhea s neighborhood is fading away the mom-and-pop shops of her childhood forced out to make space for an artisanal kombucha brewery here, a hot yoga studio there. And everywhere, the feeling that this place is no longer meant for her. Because while their little corner of South L.A. isn t perfect, to Rhea and her two best friends, it s something even more important it s home. And it s worth protecting.
But as more white people flock to their latest edgy, urban paradise for its cheap rent and sparkling new Whole Foods, more of Rhea s friends and family are pushed out. Until Rhea decides it s time to push back. Armed with their cellphones and a bag of firecrackers, the friends manipulate social media to create the illusion of gang violence in their neighborhood. All Rhea wanted to do was protect her community. Her friends. Herself. No one was supposed to get hurt. No one was supposed to die.
But is anyone ever really safe when you re fighting power with fear?
We Could Fly
by Rhiannon Giddens, Illustrated by Briana Mukodiri Uchendu
In a companion to Build a House, Rhiannon Giddens winner of multiple Grammy Awards and a Pulitzer Prize and cofounder of the Carolina Chocolate Drops gives wing to a moving tale of grace and transcendence, with acclaimed artist Briana Mukodiri Uchendu.
At a sparrow s urging, a young girl feels a mysterious trembling in her arms, a lightness in her feet, a longing to be free. Her mother tells her that her Granny Liza experienced the same, as did many of their people before her. Perhaps it s time, Mama says, to slip the bonds of earth and join the journey started long ago. To hold each other tight and rise. Drawing on lyrics from the song "We Could Fly" by Rhiannon Giddens and Dirk Powell, which in turn draw on a heritage of African folklore, this incantatory dialogue between a mother and daughter paired with startlingly beautiful illustrations celebrates love, resilience, and the spiritual power of the "old-time ways" tradition and shared cultural memory to sustain and uplift.
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