MLA YOUPER (Young Person) AWARD

The YouPer (Young Person) Award recognizes and promotes quality literature for youth in chapter book format. This award was given for the first time in 2014 by the Michigan Library Association. The award is given annually to one chapter book originally published in English during the calendar year that has captured the attention of the youth librarians throughout the State of Michigan for its ability to communicate through literature to an intended audience.

YouPer Award Guidelines (pdf)

Submit a nomination for the 2024 YouPer Award using the online form:

2024 YouPer Award Nomination Form

Award Seals

Download the YouPer Award seals to use at your library! Winner, Honor Book and Top Ten Title award seals are available for download here: (To download, right-click on the seal and save it as an image.)

 

2023 YouPer Award Winner

The winner of the 2023 YouPer Award is Three Strike Summer written by Skyler Schrempp and published by Margaret K. McElderry Books.

We announced the winners and honor books of the 2023 Mitten, YouPer and Thumbs Up! Awards at the MLA 2023 Youth Literary Awards. The awards selection group members worked throughout the year spending thousands of hours reading, reviewing and ranking hundreds of books to determine the top titles published in 2022. Watch the announcement below!

2023 YouPer Award Winner

Ophie's Ghost

Three Strike Summer
By Skyler Schrempp

  

Top Ten Titles

(Listed in random order) 

Answers in the Pages
Author: David Levithan
Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers

A Rover’s Story
Author: Jasmine Warga
Publisher: Balzer + Bray

The Door of No Return
Author: Kwame Alexander
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Swim Team
Author: Johnnie Christmas
Publisher: HarperAlley

Falling Short
Author: Ernesto Cisneros
Publisher: Quill Tree Books

Seen and Unseen: What Dorothea Lange, Toyo Miyatake, and Ansel Adams’s Photographs Reveal About the Japanese American Incarceration
Author: Elizabeth Partridge
Illustrator: Lauren Tamaki
Publisher: Chronicle Books

In the Key of Us
Author: Mariama J. Lockington
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Serwa Boateng’s Guide to Vampire Hunting (Serwa Boateng #1)
Author: Roseanne A. Brown
Publisher: Rick Riordan Presents

Little Monarchs
Author: Jonathan Case
Publisher: Margaret Ferguson Books

Three Strike Summer
Author: Skyler Schrempp
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books

Past YouPer Award Winners and Honor Books

2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022

Past YouPer Award Winners and Honor Books (pdf)

YouPer Award Home

 


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