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Golden Kite Award - Middle Grade Fiction

The Golden Kite Awards, given annually to recognize excellence in children’s literature, grant cash prizes of $2,500 to author and illustrator winners in four categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, Picture Book Text, and Picture Book Illustration. Authors and illustrators will also receive an expense-paid trip to Los Angeles to attend the award ceremony at the Golden Kite Luncheon at SCBWI’s Summer Conference in August.

 

The Civil War of Amos Abernathy

by Michael Leali
Published in 2022 by Harper
ISBN: 9780063119864

Amos Abernathy lives for history. Literally. He's been a historical reenactor nearly all his life. But when a cute new volunteer arrives at his Living History Park, Amos finds himself wondering if there's something missing from history: someone like the two of them. Amos is sure there must have been LGBTQ+ people in nineteenth-century Illinois. His search turns up Albert D. J. Cashier, a Civil War soldier who might have identified as a trans man if he'd lived today. Soon Amos starts confiding in his newfound friend by writing letters in his journal--and hatches a plan to share Albert's story with his divided twenty-first century town. It may be an uphill battle, but it's one that Amos is ready to fight.

2023 Golden Kite Award - Middle Grade Fiction

Red, White, and Whole

by Rajani LaRocca
Published in 2023 by Quill Tree Books
ISBN: 9780063047433

A novel in verse about identity, family, and hope.

2022 Golden Kite Award - Middle Grade Fiction

Ways to Make Sunshine

by Renée Watson
Published in 2020 by Bloomsbury Children’s Books
ISBN: 9781547600564

The Hart family of Portland, Oregon, faces many setbacks after Ryan's father loses his job, but no matter what, Ryan tries to bring sunshine to her loved ones.

2021 Golden Kite Award - Middle Grade Fiction

The Bridge Home

by Padma Venkatraman
Published in 2019 by Puffin Books
ISBN: 9781524738112

Life is harsh in Chennai's teeming streets, so when runaway sisters Viji and Rukku arrive, their prospects look grim. Very quickly, eleven-year-old Viji discovers how vulnerable they are in this uncaring, dangerous world. Fortunately, the girls find shelter - and friendship - on an abandoned bridge. With two homeless boys, Muthi and Arul, the group forms a family of sorts.

2020 Golden Kite Award Winner - Middle Grade Fiction

Lifeboat 12

by Susan Hood
Published in 2018 by Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 9781481468831

This compelling novel in verse, based on true events, tells the story of a boy's harrowing experience on a lifeboat after surviving a torpedo attack during World War II.

2019 Golden Kite Award Winner - Middle Grade Fiction

Vincent and Theo

by Deborah Heiligman
Published in 2017 by Henry Holt and Company
ISBN: 9780805093391

The true story of the relationship between brothers Theo and Vincent van Gogh.

2018 Golden Kite Award Winner - Fiction

We Will Not Be Silent

by Russell Freedman
Published in 2016 by Clarion Books
ISBN: 9780544223790

Presents the true story of the White Rose, a group of students in Nazi Germany who were active undercover agents of the resistance movement against Hitler and his regime.

2017 Golden Kite Award Winner - Fiction

Challenger Deep

by Neal Shusterman
Published in 2015 by HarperTeen
ISBN: 9780061134111

A teenage boy struggles with schizophrenia.

2016 Golden Kite Award Winner - Fiction

Revolution

by Deborah Wiles
Published in 2014 by Scholastic Press
ISBN: 9780545106078

It's 1964, and Sunny's town is being invaded. Or at least that's what the adults of Greenwood, Mississippi are saying. All Sunny knows is that people from up north are coming to help people register to vote. They're calling it Freedom Summer. Meanwhile, Sunny can't help but feel like her house is being invaded, too. She has a new stepmother, a new brother, and a new sister crowding her life, giving her little room to breathe.

2015 Golden Kite Award Winner - Fiction

Better Nate than Ever

by Tim Federle
Published in 2013 by Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing
ISBN: 9781442446915

An eighth-grader who dreams of performing in a Broadway musical concocts a plan to run away to New York and audition for the role of Elliot in the musical version of "E.T."

2014 Golden Kite Award Winner - Fiction

The Five Lives of Our Cat Zook

by Joanne Rocklin
Published in 2012 by Amulet Books
ISBN: 9781419701924

As ten-year-old Oona and her younger brother conspire to break their sick cat Zook out of the veterinary clinic, Oona tells the story of Zook's previous lives.

2013 Golden Kite Award Winner - Fiction

Between Shades of Gray

by Ruta Sepetys
Published in 2011 by Penguin Group USA
ISBN: 9780399254123

Between Shades of Gray tells the harrowing story of Lina, a young Lithuanian girl fighting for her life and the honor of her family during the Soviet cleansing of the Baltic region in 1941. The daughter of a Lithuanian refugee herself, Sepetys wrote this book in hopes of shedding light on the hundreds of thousands of people who lost their lives during this tragic time. Readers will be inspired by Lina’s strength of spirit and devotion to her family and moved by Sepetys’ heartfelt gift for storytelling.

2012 Golden Kite Award Winner - Fiction

Turtle in Paradise

by Jennifer Holm
Published in 2010 by Random House Books for Young Readers
ISBN: 9780375836886

In 1935, when her mother gets a job housekeeping for a woman who does not like children, eleven-year-old Turtle is sent to stay with relatives she has never met in far away Key West, Florida.

2011 Golden Kite Award Winner - Fiction

Sea of the Dead

by Julia Durango
Published in 2009 by Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing
ISBN: 9781416957782

When thirteen-year-old Kehl, fifth son of the Warrior Prince Amatec, is kidnapped by the Fallen King and forced to map the entire Carillon Empire, he also discovers a secret about his own past.

2010 Golden Kite Award Winner - Fiction

Down Sand Mountain

by Steve Watkins
Published in 2008 by Candlewick Press
ISBN: 9780763638399

In a small Florida mining town in 1966, twelve-year-old Dewey faces one worst-day-ever after another, but comes to know that the issues he faces about bullies, girls, race, and identity are part of the adult world, as well.

2008 Golden Kite Award Winner - Fiction

Home of the Brave

by Katherine Applegate
Published in 2007 by Feiwel & Friends
ISBN: 9780312367657

Kek, an African refugee, is confronted by many strange things at the Minneapolis home of his aunt and cousin, as well as in his fifth grade classroom, and longs for his missing mother, but finds comfort in the company of a cow and her owner.

2007 Golden Kite Award Winner - Fiction

Firegirl

by Tony Abbott
Published in 2006 by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
ISBN: 9780316011716

A middle school boy's life is changed when Jessica, a girl disfigured by burns, starts attending his Catholic school while receiving treatment at a local hospital.

2006 Golden Kite Award Winner - Fiction

A Room on Lorelei Street

by Mary E. Pearson
Published in 2005 by Henry Holt & Company
ISBN: 9780805076677

To escape a miserable existence taking care of her alcoholic mother, seventeen-year-old Zoe rents a room from an eccentric woman, but her earnings as a waitress after school are minimal and she must go to extremes to cover expenses.

2005 Golden Kite Award Winner - Fiction

Bucking the Sarge

by Christopher Paul Curtis
Published in 2004 by Wendy Lamb Books
ISBN: 9780385323079

Deeply involved in his cold and manipulative mother's shady business dealings in Flint, Michigan, fourteen-year-old Luther keeps a sense of humor while running the Happy Neighbor Group Home For Men, all the while dreaming of going to college and becoming a philosopher.

2004 Golden Kite Award Winner - Fiction

Milkweed

by Jerry Spinelli
Published in 2003 by Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers
ISBN: 9780375813740

He's a boy who wants to be a Nazi some day, with tall shiny jackboots and a gleaming Eagle hat of his own. Until the day that suddenly makes him change his mind. And when the trains come to empty the Jews from the ghetto of the damned, he's a boy who realizes it's safest of all to be nobody. Newbery Medalist Jerry Spinelli takes us to one of the most devastating settings imaginable--Nazi-occupied Warsaw of World War II--and tells a tale of heartbreak, hope, and survival through the bright eyes of a young orphan.

2003 Golden Kite Award Winner - Fiction

Fresh Girl

by Jaira Placide
Published in 2002 by Wendy Lamb Books
ISBN: 9780385327534

After having been sent, at a very young age, from New York to live with her grandmother in Haiti, fourteen-year-old Mardi returns to join her parents and try to shape a new life in Brooklyn.

2002 Golden Kite Award Winner - Fiction

True Believer

by Virginia Euwer Wolff
Published in 2001 by Atheneum Books for Young Readers
ISBN: 9780689828270

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 make it--an occasion to rise to.

2001 Golden Kite Award Winner - Fiction

The Boxer

by Kathleen Karr
Published in 2000 by Farrar Straus Giroux
ISBN: 9780374309213

Having learned how to box while in prison, fifteen-year-old Johnny sets out to discover if he can make a decent living as a fighter in late nineteenth-century New York City.

2000 Golden Kite Award Winner - Fiction

Speak

by Laurie Halse Anderson
Published in 1999 by Farrar Straus Giroux
ISBN: 9780374371524

A traumatic event near the end of the summer has a devastating effect on Melinda's freshman year in high school.

1999 Golden Kite Award Winner - Fiction

Rules of the Road

by Joan Bauer
Published in 1998 by G.P. Putnam's Sons
ISBN: 9780399231407

Sixteen-year-old Jenna gets a job driving the elderly owner of a chain of successful shoe stores from Chicago to Texas to confront the son who is trying to force her to retire, and along the way Jenna hones her talents as a saleswoman and finds the strength to face her alcoholic father.

1998 Golden Kite Award Winner - Fiction

Stones in Water

by Donna Jo Napoli
Published in 1997 by Dutton Children's Books
ISBN: 9780525458425

After being taken by German soldiers from a local movie theater along with other Italian boys including his Jewish friend, Roberto is forced to work in Germany, escapes into the Ukrainian winter, before desperately trying to make his way back home to Venice.

1997 Golden Kite Award Winner - Fiction

The Moorchild

by Eloise McGraw
Published in 1996 by Margaret K. McElderry Books
ISBN: 9780689806544

Half Moorfolk and half human, and unable to shape-shift or disappear at will, Moql threatens the safety of the Band. So the Folk banish her and send her to live among humans as a changeling. Named Saaski by the couple for whose real baby she was swapped, she grows up taunted and feared by the villagers for being different, and is comfortable only on the moor, playing strange music on her bagpipes.

1996 Golden Kite Award Winner - Fiction

The Watsons Go to Birmingham-1963

by Christopher Paul Curtis
Published in 1995 by Listening Library Inc.
ISBN: 9780440228004

The ordinary interactions and everyday routines of the Watsons, an African American family living in Flint, Michigan, are drastically changed after they go to visit Grandma in Alabama in the summer of 1963.

1995 Golden Kite Award Winner - Fiction

Catherine, Called Birdy

by Karen Cushman
Published in 1994 by
ISBN:

1994 Golden Kite Award Winner - Fiction

Make Lemonade

by Virginia Euwer Wolff
Published in 1993 by
ISBN:

1993 Golden Kite Award Winner - Fiction

Letters From a Slave Girl

by Mary E. Lyons
Published in 1992 by
ISBN:

1992 Golden Kite Award Winner - Fiction

The Raincatchers

by Jean Thesman
Published in 1991 by
ISBN:

1991 Golden Kite Award Winner - Fiction

The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle

by Avi
Published in 1990 by
ISBN:

1990 Golden Kite Award Winner - Fiction

Jenny of the Tetons

by Kristiana Gregory
Published in 1989 by
ISBN:

1989 Golden Kite Award Winner - Fiction

Borrowed Children

by George Ella Lyon
Published in 1988 by
ISBN:

1988 Golden Kite Award Winner - Fiction

Rabble Stareky

by Lois Lowry
Published in 1987 by
ISBN:

1987 Golden Kite Award Winner - Fiction

After the Dancing Days

by Margaret Rostowski
Published in 1986 by
ISBN:

1986 Golden Kite Award Winner - Fiction

Sarah, Plain and Tall

by Patricia MacLachlan
Published in 1985 by
ISBN: 9780060241025

1985 Golden Kite Award Winner - Fiction

Tancy

by Belinda Hurmence
Published in 1984 by
ISBN:

1984 Golden Kite Award Winner - Fiction

The Tempering

by Gloria Skurzynski
Published in 1983 by
ISBN:

1983 Golden Kite Award Winner - Fiction

Ralph S. Mouse

by Beverly Cleary
Published in 1982 by
ISBN:

1982 Golden Kite Award Winner - Fiction

Little, Little

by M. E. Kerr
Published in 1981 by
ISBN:

1981 Golden Kite Award Winner - Fiction

Arthur, For the Very First Time

by Patricia MacLachlan
Published in 1980 by
ISBN:

1980 Golden Kite Award Winner - Fiction

The Magic of the Gluts

by Carole S. Adler
Published in 1979 by
ISBN:

1979 Golden Kite Award Winner - Fiction

And You Give Me a Pain, Elaine

by Stella Pevsner
Published in 1978 by
ISBN:

1978 Golden Kite Award Winner - Fiction

The Girl Who Had No Name

by Bernice Rabe
Published in 1977 by
ISBN:

1977 Golden Kite Award Winner - Fiction

The Garden Is Doing Fine

by Carol Farley
Published in 1975 by
ISBN:

1975 Golden Kite Award Winner - Fiction

The Girl Who Cried Flowers

by Jane Yolen
Published in 1974 by
ISBN:

1974 Golden Kite Award Winner - Fiction


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