COLLEGE OF

Education and Human Development

2024 Book Week

A celebration of children's literature

Every Good Story
Kate DiCamillo will provide a meditation on how reading and writing stories can help us become ourselves.

Book Week is the annual celebration of children’s books and authors organized at the University of Minnesota since 1941. The event attracts teachers, librarians, educators, students, and audiences passionate about young readers’ literacy. Over the past 80 years, Book Week has featured some of the most notable authors of children’s and YA literature, including Madeleine L’Engle, Kate DiCamillo, Christopher Paul Curtis, and Gene Luen Yang. Book Week is hosted by faculty and graduate students from the children’s literature program in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. The guest author’s books are available for sale and autographing.

2023 Book Week highlight video

More information

    Parking & transportation

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    Accommodations

    CEHD strives to host inclusive, accessible events that enable all individuals, including individuals with disabilities, to engage fully. To request any type of accommodations in order to fully participate, please complete the form below and/or contact cehdrsvp@umn.edu at least two weeks before the event date.

    Please note that two ASL interpreters will be onsite during the lecture and discussion; they will alternate interpreting for the audience during those portions of the event. A CART captioner will provide captions for the livestreamed webinar.

    Health

    The safety of our guests is our top priority. CEHD follows guidance from the University, local health departments, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to ensure the health and safety of event attendees. The University supports those who wish to continue to wear masks in any space and all community members are expected to respect the decision of anyone who continues to wear a mask. For the most up-to-date information, check the University's Safe Campus website. Please be aware that public health conditions may require a cancellation at the last minute, so refer to the website for the latest information.

    Photo release

    Photographs taken at the event may be used in University of Minnesota print and online publications, promotions, or shared with the CEHD community.

    Previous authors

      2024: Kate DiCamillo

      The theme of hope and belief amid impossible circumstances is a common thread in much of Kate DiCamillo’s writing. In fact, DiCamillo’s own journey is something of a dream come true. After moving to Minnesota from Florida in her twenties, homesickness and a bitter winter helped inspire Because of Winn-Dixie—her first published novel, which, remarkably, became a runaway bestseller and snapped up a Newbery Honor. “After the Newbery committee called me, I spent the whole day walking into walls,” she says. “I was stunned. And very, very happy.”


      Her second novel, The Tiger Rising, went on to become a National Book Award Finalist, followed by The Tale of Despereaux, her first Newbery Medal winner. Since then the master storyteller has written for a wide range of ages, received countless awards, and currently has over 44 million books in print worldwide. Her stories have been translated into 41 languages, and she continues to enjoy a robust following of readers all over the globe. She has collaborated with some of the top illustrators of the day, including Sophie Blackall, Chris Van Dusen, Jaime Kim, Carmen Mok, Timothy Basil Ering, and Harry Bliss.


      Beloved by the entertainment world, many of her books have been adapted for stage and screen. There are popular feature film versions of some of her classic novels, including Because of Winn- Dixie, The Tale of Despereaux, Flora & Ulysses, The Tiger Rising, and The Magician’s Elephant.


      Kate DiCamillo, a literacy advocate and a Library of Congress National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature Emerita, says about stories, “When we read together, we connect. Together, we see the world. Together, we see one another.”

      Featured books

      The Hotel Balzaar

      Ferris

      Orris and Timble

      2023: Jason Chin

      Caldecott medalist Jason Chin is the author and illustrator of many acclaimed books, including Grand Canyon, Redwoods and Your Place in the Universe. He received the 2022 Caldecott Medal for Watercress, by Andrea Wang and a Caldecott Honor, Sibert Honor, and the NCTE Orbis Pictus award for Grand Canyon. While researching his books, he’s gone swimming with sharks, explored lava fields and camped with scorpions at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Jason loves making art, learning about science and getting outside to hike, bike, ski and explore.

      Jason grew up in a small town in New Hampshire that happened to be home to Caldecott medalist, Trina Schart Hyman. Hyman presented regularly at his elementary school and they met when he was a teenager. She became his mentor and guided him as he pursued a career in the arts. Jason studied art at Syracuse University and began his illustration career while living in New York City. In 2009 he published Redwoods, his first book as both author and illustrator. Since then, he as written and illustrated numerous award-winning books that combine his passion for nature, science and art. Jason now lives with his family in Vermont.

      Featured books

      Island

      Nine Months

      Pie is for Sharing         

      Redwoods 

      2022: David Bowles

      David Bowles Headshot

      David Bowles is the award-winning author and translator of more than two dozen books for children and teens, among them They Call Me Güero, My Two Border Towns, and The Sea-Ringed World. His work has been published in multiple anthologies, plus venues such as The New York Times, School Library Journal, Translation Review, and the Journal of Children’s Literature. In 2019, David co-founded the activist movement Dignidad Literaria to fight for the literary and cultural dignity of Latinx people in US publishing and education. He presently serves as the vice president of the Texas Institute of Letters.

      2022 Book Week highlight video

      They Call Me Guero

      They Call Her Fregona

      My Two Border Towns

      The Unicorn Rescue Society: The Chupacabras of the Rio Grande

      2021: Eliot Schrefer

      Schrefer headshot

      Eliot Schrefer is a New York Times-bestselling author, and has twice been a finalist for the National Book Award. In naming him an Editor’s Choice, the New York Times has called his work “dazzling… big-hearted.” He is also the author of two novels for adults and four other novels for children and young adults. His books have been named to the NPR “best of the year” list, the ALA best fiction list for young adults, and the Chicago Public Library’s “Best of the Best.” His work has also been selected to the Amelia Bloomer List, recognizing best feminist books for young readers, and he has been a finalist for the Walden Award and won the Green Earth Book Award and Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award. He lives in New York City, where he reviews books for USAToday.

      Featured books

      The Brightness Between Us

      The Darkness Outside Us                                                                                         

      Queer Ducks  

      The Lost Rainforest                                     

      2019: Donna Jo Napoli

      Image of Donna Jo Napoli

      Donna Jo Napoli is the author of award-winning books for children as well as a prominent linguist, whose work ranges from mathematical analysis of folk dance to structures of American Sign Language. Born to Italian American parents, Napoli is best known for her emotionally gripping retellings of premodern folk and fairy tales, like Zel, The Magic Circle, The Great God Pan or Mogo, the Third Warthog, but her prolific work ranges across genres and formats. Most of her books deal with a loss or challenge and feature characters who develop the ability to overcome a disruption in their lives.

      Featured books

      Zel

      Zel

      Zel
      The Magic Circle

      The Magic Circle

      The Magic Circle
      The Great God Pan

      The Great God Pan

      The Great God Pan
      Mogo, The Third Warthog

      Mogo, The Third Warthog

      Mogo, The Third Warthog

      2018: Nnedi Okorafor

      Nnedi Okorafor Headshot

      Nigerian American writer and professor Nnedi Okorafor has incorporated Nigerian cosmology, creatures her mother told her about, and stories she overheard the elders tell in Nigeria, into her books and short stories. Despite the fact that her work is classified as speculative, it's actually not so easy to tell what's fact and what is fiction in her work. Nnedi Okorafor will discuss the inspirations behind her highly imaginative works of science fiction and fantasy and prove to you that "realistic" fiction has many faces.

      Okorafor is an international award-winning author of Africa-based science fiction and fantasy. Born in the United States to two Nigerian immigrant parents, she is known for weaving African culture into evocative settings, memorable characters, and wonder-filled plots. Nnedi’s books for the young audience include, among others, the Binti series, Akata Witch, The Shadow Speaker and Akata Warrior. Her most recent graphic novel, Black Panther, saw a movie spin-off that became a worldwide sensation. Nnedi’s World Fantasy Award winning novel Who Fears Death is currently adapted by HBO into a TV series produced by Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin.

      Featured books

      Akata Witch

      Akata Witch

      Akata Witch
      Akata Warrior

      Akata Warrior

      Akata Warrior
      Who Fears Death

      Who Fears Death

      Who Fears Death

      2017: Thanhha Lai

      Thanhha Lai

      Thanhha Lai is the award-winning young adult author. Lai's debut novel Inside Out & Back Again won the 2011 National Book Award for Young People's Literature and a Newbery Honor. Her second novel, Listen, Slowly is a New York Times bestseller, Publisher's Weekly Best Book and has been heralded in Booklist's starred review as "a superb, sometimes humorous, always thought-provoking coming-of-age story."

      Please join us on Tuesday, October 17 at the McNamara Alumni Center, to hear Thanhha Lai talk about "Telling Stories from the Inside Out".

      Visit Thanhha Lai's website for more information about her work.

      Featured books

      Inside Out and Back Again

      Inside Out and Back Again

      Inside Out and Back Again
      Listen, Slowly

      Listen, Slowly

      Listen, Slowly

      2016: Candace Fleming

      Candace Fleming Headshot

      Candace Fleming, photo: Michael Lionstar

      Candace Fleming Headshot

      Candace Fleming is the author of more than thirty children’s books, including picture books, middle grade novels, and biographies. A few of her most well known works are: The Lincolns: A Scrapbook Look at Abraham and Mary, Amelia Lost: The Life and Disappearance of Amelia Earhart and most recently, The Family Romanov: Murder, Rebellion and the Fall of Imperial Russia which garnered six starred reviews.

      Along with being the recipient of the Children’s Book Guild of Washington D.C.’s Nonfiction Award given for her " high quality nonfictions books for children of different ages " she has received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and is a two-time recipient of both the Boston Globe/Horn Book Award for Nonfiction and the Society of Book Writers and Illustrators Golden Kite Award for Nonfiction.

      Among her other honors are the Orbis Pictus Award, the ALA Sibert Honor, and the YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults Award.

      Candace lives in Oak Park, Illinois with one dog, two cats and her partner and sometimes-collaborator, Caldecott medalist Eric Rohmann.

      Featured books

      Romanov: Murder, Rebellion and the Fall of Imperial Russia

      Romanov: Murder, Rebellion and the Fall of Imperial Russia

      Romanov: Murder, Rebellion and the Fall of Imperial Russia
      The Lincolns: A Scrapbook Look at Abraham and Mary

      The Lincolns: A Scrapbook Look at Abraham and Mary

      The Lincolns: A Scrapbook Look at Abraham and Mary
      Amelia Lost: The Life and Disappearance of Amelia Earhart

      Amelia Lost: The Life and Disappearance of Amelia Earhart

      Amelia Lost: The Life and Disappearance of Amelia Earhart

      2015: Pam Muñoz Ryan

      Image of Pam Muñoz Ryan

      Pam has written over forty books for young people, including picture books, picture books for older readers, early readers, and the novels Esperanza Rising, Becoming Naomi León, Riding Freedom, Paint the Wind, The Dreamer, and most recently, Echo, a New York Times Bestseller.

      She is the author recipient of the NEA's Civil and Human Rights Award, the Virginia Hamilton Literary Award for Multicultural Literature, and is twice the recipient of the Pura Belpré Medal.

      Other selected honors include the PEN USA Award, the Américas Award, the Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor, the Orbis Pictus Award, the ALA Siebert Honor, and the Schneider Family Award.

      Book week highlights

      Featured books

      Esperanza Rising

      Esperanza Rising

      Esperanza Rising
      Becoming Naomi León

      Becoming Naomi León

      Becoming Naomi León
      Riding Freedom

      Riding Freedom

      Riding Freedom

      2014: Nancy Farmer

      Image of Nancy Farmer

      I was born in Arizona and grew up in a hotel on the Mexican border. I attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon. After graduating, instead of taking a regular job, I joined the Peace Corps and was sent to India for two years. When I returned I lived in a commune in Berkeley, California, and worked for a lab making, among other things, bubonic plague vaccine.

      A friend and I tried to hitchhike to Africa, but the ship we selected turned out to be stolen and was boarded by the Coast Guard just outside the Golden Gate Bridge. They dumped us on shore and told us not to be such ninnies.

      I studied chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, and worked for the Entomology Department. My job was controlling insects that eat traffic islands. It’s amazing what kind of jobs you can find. I also worked briefly on an oceanography vessal. That job ended when the captain (Aka Captain Crunch) tore an eighty-foot chunk out of the side.

      Eventually, I earned enough money to buy a ticket to Africa. I worked on controlling water weeds in Mozambique. My job was to keep them from clogging up a giant power plant on the Zambezi River. I then did tsetse fly control in the dense bush of Zimbabwe. I was introduced to my future husband Harold by his soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend. One week later he proposed. We have one son, Daniel, who is in the U.S. Navy. We now live in the Chiricahua Mountains of Arizona, on a major drug route for the Sinaloa Cartel.

      My best-known books are The House of the Scorpion and its sequel The Lord of Opium, The Sea of Trolls trilogy, The Ear, the Eye and the Arm, and A Girl Named Disaster. Honors include the National Book Award and three Newbery Honors.

      Featured books

      The Ear, the Eye and the Arm

      A Girl Named Disaster book cover

      A Girl Named Disaster

      A Girl Named Disaster book cover

      The House of the Scorpion

      Book week highlights

      2013: Gene Luen Yang

      Gene Luen Yang

      What are the career options for a gaming addict with a terrific hand-eye coordination? What are the four prerequisites for immortality? Is it possible to breach cultural difference? How can comics and graphic novels be used in education?

      Join us on October 21 and learn about these and other questions you’ve always wanted to ask from the author of the first graphic novel ever to win the prestigious ALA’s Michael L. Printz Award for excellence in young adult literature.

      Best known for his American Born Chinese, Gene Luen Yang is a voice of the digital generation who appreciate visual formats as legitimate literary forms. A teacher, author and illustrator, Gene has produced an array of works that deal with complex questions of identity, multiculturalism, and the search for a place to belong in a world where young people’s loyalties lie in seemingly irreconcilable areas. His Level Up, The Eternal Smile, The Avatar: the Last Airbender and a recent graphic novel diptych Boxers and Saints have won high praise from reviewers and deep appreciation from their young readers.

      If you have ever wondered about the appeal of comic books and graphic novels to modern teens this is the event for you. Learn about the year’s best books for children and young adults, hear Gene’s talk on his work and the use of graphic formats in the classroom, and engage with him and the audience in a lively Q&A session that will follow.

      Book week highlights

      Featured books

      Boxers and Saints

      Boxers and Saints

      Boxers and Saints
      American Born Chinese

      American Born Chinese

      American Born Chinese
      Avatar: The Last Airbender – The Promise

      Avatar: The Last Airbender – The Promise

      Avatar: The Last Airbender – The Promise

      2012: Mem Fox

      Mem Fox

      Mem Fox was born in Australia, grew up in Africa, and studied drama in England. She returned to Adelaide, Australia, in 1970, where she has lived with her husband, Malcolm, and daughter, Chloë, happily ever after.

      Fox is Australia’s most highly regarded picture-book author. Her first book Possum Magic, is the nation’s best-selling children’s book ever, with sales exceeding four million. In the USA,Time for Bed and Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge have each sold more than a million copies. Time for Bed is on Oprah’s list of the 20 best children’s books of all time.

      Featured books

      Possum Magic

      Time For Bed

      Ten Little Fingers

      Giraffe in the Bath

      Fox has written more than 35 picture books for children and five non-fiction books for adults, including the best-selling Reading Magic, aimed at parents of very young children. Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes, beautifully illustrated by Helen Oxenbury, was on the New York Times bestseller lists for 18 weeks in 2008-09. Its Italian edition won the “best book for 0-3 year olds” award at the International Book Fair in Turin in May 2010.

      As an associate professor in literacy studies at Flinders University in Adelaide, Fox taught teachers for 24 years until her early retirement in 1996. She has received many civic awards, honors, and accolades in Australia, including two honorary doctorates. She has visited the United States more than a hundred times, mostly in her role as a literacy expert. She is an influential international consultant in literacy, but she pretends to sit around writing full time.

      Her latest book is A Giraffe in the Bath. She hopes four year olds and over—including adults—will adore it.

      2011: Joseph Bruchac

      Image of Joseph Bruchac

      Joseph Bruchac lives in the Adirondack Mountain foothills town of Greenfield Center, New York, in the same house where his maternal grandparents raised him. Much of his writing draws on that land and his Abenaki ancestry.

      Although his American Indian heritage is only one part of an ethnic background that includes Slovak and English blood, those Native roots are the ones by which he has been most nourished. He, his younger sister Margaret, and his two grown sons, James and Jesse, continue to work extensively in projects involving the understanding and preservation of the natural world, Abenaki culture, Abenaki language and traditional Native skills. (See dictionary of the Western Abenaki Language). They also perform traditional and contemporary Abenaki music together as The Dawnland Singers.

      He often works with his son James teaching wilderness survival and outdoor awareness at the Ndakinna (Our Land) Education Center, their 90 acre family nature preserve which was the first property placed in a Conservation easement in Saratoga County in upstate New York.

      Featured books

      Pocahontas

      Sacajawea

      Skeleton Man

      His early professional goal was to become a naturalist, and he spent three years studying Wildlife Conservation at Cornell University before a deepening interest in writing led him to switch his major and graduate with a B.A. in English. His lifelong interest in the natural world has been a frequent focus in his writing, especially in the best-selling “Keepers of the Earth” series he co-authored with naturalist Michael Caduto. He also earned a master's degree from Syracuse University and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the Union Institute of Ohio.

      His work as an educator includes three years of volunteer teaching in Ghana, West Africa and eight years of directing a college program for Skidmore College inside a maximum security prison. A former college varsity wrestler at Cornell, he has worked as a high school and junior high school wrestling coach. He also holds a fourth degree black belt and has spent over thirty years studying and teaching Pentjak-silat, the martial art of Indonesia.

      Founder and Executive Director of The Greenfield Review Press, he has edited a number of highly praised anthologies of contemporary poetry, including Songs from this Earth on Turtle's Back and Breaking Silence (winner of an American Book Award). His poems, articles and stories have appeared in over 500 publications, from American Poetry Review to National Geographic. He has authored more than 120 books for adults and children, including Sacajawea, Crazy Horse’s Vision, Geronimo, A Boy Called Slow, Eagle Song and Skeleton Man. His honors include a Rockefeller Humanities fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Writing Fellowship for Poetry, the Hope S. Dean Award for Notable Achievement in Children's Literature and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas.

      Book Week guest speakers since 1941

      • 2010 Christopher Paul Curtis
      • 2009 Susan Marie Swanson
      • 2008 Joyce Sidman
      • 2007 Catherine Thimmesh
      • 2006 John Coy
      • 2005 Mary Casanova
      • 2004 Lise Lunge Larsen
      • 2003 Kate Di Camillo
      • 2002 Debra Fraser
      • 2001 Patricia Polacco
      • 2000 Jane Kurtz
      • 1999 Wendell Minor
      • 1998 Betty Ren Wright
      • 1997 Karen Ritz
      • 1996 Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve
      • 1995 Barbara Esbensen
      • 1994 Eve Bunting
      • 1993 Marion Dane Bauer
      • 1992 Lawrence Yep
      • 1991 Jane Resh Thomas
      • 1990 Judy Delton
      • 1989 Constance Greene
      • 1988 Tomie de Paola
      • 1987 Byrd Baylor
      • 1986 Barbara Robinson
      • 1985 Paula Fox
      • 1984 Charlotte Zolotow
      • 1983 Mary Rodgers
      • 1982 Esther Hautzig
      • 1981 Nat Hentoff
      • 1980 Ashley Bryan
      • 1979 Bette Greene
      • 1978 Ellen Raskin
      • 1977 Lillian Hoban
      • 1976 James Houston
      • 1975 Natalie Babbitt
      • 1974 Jean Craighead George
      • 1973 Gerald McDermott
      • 1972 Beverly Cleary
      • 1971 Lorenz Graham
      • 1970 Ruth Christopher & Robert Carlsen
      • 1969 Mary Stolz
      • 1968 May McNeer and Lynd Ward
      • 1967 Elizabeth Yates
      • 1966 Ezra Jack Keats
      • 1965 Carol Ryrie Brink
      • 1964 Madeleine L’Engle
      • 1963 Marguerite Henry
      • 1962 Velma Varner, editor
      • 1961 John Ciardi
      • 1960 Natalie Savage Carlson
      • 1959 Robert McCloskey
      • 1958 Virginia Sorenson
      • 1957 Phyllis Fenner
      • 1956 May Hill Arbuthnot
      • 1955 Walter S. Havighurst
      • 1954 Martha Kiser
      • 1953 Rebecca Caudill
      • 1952 Marguerite Henry
      • 1951 Clara Ingram Judson
      • 1950 Howard Pease
      • 1949 Marguerite Bro
      • 1948 Maud Hart Lovelace
      • 1947 Margaret C. Scoggin
      • 1946 Florence Means
      • 1945 Mary Gould Davis
      • 1944 Vera Kelsey
      • 1943 Bernice Leary
      • 1942 Genevieve Foster
      • 1941 Ruth Sawyer

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      Land acknowledgement

      The University of Minnesota campuses were built on the traditional homelands of the Dakota and Ojibwe, and scores of other Indigenous peoples who have walked on these lands from time immemorial. It is important to acknowledge the peoples on whose land we live, learn, and work as we seek to improve and strengthen our relations with our tribal nations. We also acknowledge that words are not enough. We must ensure that our institution provides support, resources, and programs that increase access to all aspects of higher education for our American Indian students, staff, faculty, and community members.