Jane Addams Children's Book Award Books

The Jane Addams Children's Book Award is named for Jane Addams, the Hull House founder who helped establish the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom in 1915 and became the first American woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Members of that league created the award in 1953. It is now presented annually by the Jane Addams Peace Association to books for children ages five through fourteen that engage young readers in thinking about peace, social justice, global community, and equity for all people.

Winners and honor books are named in two categories, picture book and chapter book, and are chosen by a national committee for literary and aesthetic excellence as well as for subject. The guidelines ask that a book invite dialogue, reflection, and deep questioning rather than deliver a lesson, which is what separates this list from a general values-based booklist.

For a parent or teacher, it is a reliable place to look for titles about conflict, fairness, difference, and nonviolent responses to injustice that hold up to conversation after the last page, with the two categories making it easy to find the right one for a read-aloud or an independent reader.

Information from the Jane Addams Peace Association.