Annal:1996 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature
From AwardAnnals
Results of the National Book Award in the year 1996. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
Parrot in the Oven: Mi vida
- 1998 Belpré–narrative winner
- 1996 NBA–Youth winner
- Score: 20.48
For Manuel Hernandez, the year leading up to his test of courage, his initiation into a gang, is a time filled with the pain and tension, awkwardness and excitement of growing up in a crazy world.
- 1997 Newbery honor
- 1996 NBA–Youth finalist
- Score: 12.47
Nhamo’s mother is dead, and her father is gone. She is a virtual slave in her small African village. Before her twelfth birthday, Nhamo learns that she must marry a cruel man with three other wives—and decides desperately to run away. Alone on the river, in a stolen boat, she is swept into the uncharted heart of a great lake. There, she battles drowning, starvation, and wild animals, and comes to know Africa’s mystical, luminous spirits.
Nancy Farmer’s masterful storytelling makes this a truly spellbinding novel—and readers will be cheering for Nhamo from…
- 1996 NBA–Youth finalist
- Score: 6.46
Things used to be normal in Casper, Alabama. Charity Pittman was a regular fourteen-year-old, the perfect daughter, following in her preacher father’s footsteps. But then Adrienne arrived, with her big-city ways and artsy ideas. Reverend Pittman thinks she’s the devil incarnate. Charity thinks she’s amazing.
But no one knows what to think of Adrienne when she claims she’s seen Jesus.
In the heartening and humorous book that made the National Book Award shortlist, Han Nolan visits a small town that’s praying for a miracle but heading for disaster.
- 1996 NBA–Youth finalist
- Score: 6.46
When the grey Korean Changma—the rainy season—arrives, eleven-year-old Junehee resigns herself to long months cooped up with her sisters, her mother, and her grandmother. But this year, the Changma brings more than water. Orphaned by a mudslide, a young boy comes to live in Junehee’s house—and stirs up long-hidden secrets in her family.
For as the rain drums out its story on the sloped roofs of the village, Junehee’s own family story unfolds. And Junehee soon realizes that her mother’s sadness is tied to a long-standing tradition that neglects women’s dreams—a…
- 1996 NBA–Youth finalist
- 1996 Newbery honor
- Score: 12.46
When Jamie saw him throw the baby, saw Van throw the little baby, saw Van throw his little sister Nin, then they moved.
So begins one of the most compelling novels for young readers published in recent memory. It is a story of survival—how nine-year-old Jamie, his mother, and his baby sister Nin leave an abusive situation, move to a small trailer in the woods, and slowly learn how to trust the people around them—and each other.
