Annal:2004 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature
From AwardAnnals
Results of the National Book Award in the year 2004. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
- 2004 NBA–Youth winner
- Score: 10.54
“I refuse to speak further of the Ten-legged One…but the more I think about it, the more I like it. Why mess around with Catholicism when you can have your own customized religion? All you need is a disciple or two…and a god.”
Fed up with his parents’ boring old religion, agnostic-going-on-atheist Jason Bock invents a new god—the town’s water tower. He recruits an unlikely group of worshippers: his snail-farming best friend, Shin, cute-as-a-button (whatever that means) Magda Price, and the violent and unpredictable Henry Stagg. As their religion grows,…
- 2004 NBA–Youth finalist
- Score: 6.54
Ruby McQueen is a sixteen-year-old high school student with the name, she thinks, of a rodeo cowgirl porn star, or, maybe worse, a Texas beauty queen runner-up. Her mother, Ann, one of the town librarians, was reading too much Southern literature before Ruby was born, and Chip, Ruby’s father, who was already dreaming of Nashville stardom, thought it would make a great stage name someday. Soon after Chip Jr. was born, Chip left to try his luck in the music business and ended up at the Gold Nugget Amusement Park one state over. He returns occasionally for visits…
Harlem Stomp! A Cultural History of the Harlem Renaissance
- 2004 NBA–Youth finalist
- Score: 6.54
The Harlem Renaissance was one of the most exciting and important periods in American cultural history. Determined to make a new start for themselves at the dawn of the twentieth century, many African Americans joined the “Great Migration” and headed to the North. For those who landed in the hotbed of Harlem, New York, it was a time of intellectual, artistic, literary, and political blossoming. Influential African-American artists and activists took center stage as their burgeoning creativity captured the attention of the world. Harlem Stomp! is a breathtaking…
- 2004 NBA–Youth finalist
- Score: 6.54
The day Uncle Goodwin “Buddy” Bush came from Harlem all the way back home to Rehobeth Road in Rich Square, North Carolina, is the day Pattie Mae Sheals’ life changes forever.
Pattie Mae adores and admires Uncle Buddy—he’s tall and handsome and he doesn’t believe in the country stuff most people believe in, like ghosts and stepping off the sidewalk to let white folks pass. He unsettles the dust and brings fresh ideas to Rehobeth Road. But when Buddy’s deliberate inattention to the protocol of 1947 North Carolina lands him in jail for a crime against a white…
