Center for Children’s Literature

Irma Black Award

The Irma Simonton Black and James H. Black Award for Excellence in Children’s Literature (Irma Black Award) goes to an outstanding book for young children—a book in which text and illustrations are inseparable, each enhancing and enlarging on the other to produce a singular whole. The Irma Black Award is unusual in that children are the final judges of the winning book.

Irma Black Award Voting Form

If you have already registered to be an Irma Black Award participant, please submit your votes by April 19, 2019.

Voting Form

2019 Irma S. & James H. Black Award Semi Finalists

Stumpkin
Semi Finalist		 We Don't Eat Our Classmates
Semi Finalist		 Sun! One in a Billion
Semi Finalist		 The Wall in the Middle of the Book
Semi Finalist

Irma Simonton Black Semi Finalists

  • Stumpkin by Lucy Ruth Cummins (Atheneum/Simon & Schuster)
  • We Don’t Eat Our Classmates by Ryan T. Higgins (Disney/Hyperion)
  • Sun! One in a Billion by Stacy McAnulty, illustrations by Stevie Lewis (Henry Holt/Macmillan)
  • The Wall in the Middle of the Book by Jon Agee (Dial/Penguin Books for Young Readers)
7 Ate 9

2018 Irma Black Award Winner

7 Ate 9: The Untold Story
by Tara Lazar, illustrated by Ross MacDonald (Disney Hyperion)

Semi-finalists

  • How the Cookie Crumbled: The True (and Not-So-True) Stories of the Invention of the Chocolate Chip Cookie written and illustrated by Gilbert Ford (Simon and Schuster)
  • After the Fall: How Humpty Dumpty Got Back Up Again written and illustrated by Dan Santat (Roaring Brook Press)
  • Sparkle Boy by Lesléa Newman; illustrated by Maria Mola (Lee and Low Books Inc.)

Register for 2019