Award of the Week: Blue Hen Book Award

The Blue Hen Book Award is a children’s choice award sponsored by the Children’s Services Division of the Delaware Library Association. Each year teens and children will have the opportunity to vote on selected books published in the last year.

2019 Winners
Younger Readers
	Even Monsters Need to Sleep By: Lisa Wheeler Illustrated by: Chris Van Dusen What do you do before you go to bed at night? Bigfoot hugs his wooby extra tight, while aliens have pillow fights. Nessie gets a drink, then swims down deep. But in the end, everybody needs to sleep… even monsters.
Middle Readers
	The Shrunken Head By: Lauren Oliver and H. C. Chester Illustrated by: Benjamin Lacombe Orphans Philippa, Sam, Thomas, and Max must find out who stole a valuable artifact in order to save their home, Dumfrey’s Dime Museum of Freaks, Oddities, and Wonders.
Middle Reader Graphic Novel
	El Deafo By: Cece Bell Illustrated by: David Lasky In this cleverly illustrated graphic novel, Cece Bell re-imagines her childhood self as a superhero bunny with deafness. Cece is only four years old when she becomes deaf. Her doctor gives her a Phonic Ear to help her hear. From then on, her life changes dramatically. The Phonic Ear, a box that hangs around her neck with cords and ear buds attached, makes Cece feel very insecure. Eventually, she realizes that the ear buds, buried deep in her long rabbit ears, give her the superpower of hearing others, even from far away. This superpower leads to the creation of Cece’s new secret identity: El Deafo.
Teen Readers
	The Hate U Give By: Angie Thomas Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed. Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalil’s name. Some cops and the local drug lord try to intimidate Starr and her family. What everyone wants to know is: what really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr. But what Starr does or does not say could upend her community. It could also endanger her life.
Teen Graphic Novel
	Erased By: Kei Sanbe Twenty-nine-year-old Satoru Fujinuma is floundering through life. When he isn’t struggling toward his dream of being a successful manga artist, he’s delivering pizzas–and the latter is becoming more of a career than his manga is. Amid his daily drudgery, he lives in the grip of an incredible, uncontrollable phenomenon, a condition that seems only to make his drab life worse. This phenomenon (which he has termed Revival) sends him back minutes in time, forcing Satoru to relive moments again and again until he has averted an impending disaster–usually leading to fresh disaster for Satoru himself. But then one day, everything changes. A terrible incident alters Satoru’s life as he knows it…and with it comes a Revival that sends Satoru eighteen years into the past! In the body of his boyhood self, he encounters his old classmate Kayo Hinazuki, a girl who was kidnapped and murdered when he was a boy the first time around. To return to the present and prevent the tragedy that sent him spiraling back to his childhood, Satoru needs to change Hinazuki’s fate…But up against the clock and a faceless evil, does the eleven-year-old Satoru even stand a chance?