2013 illinois rebecca caudill award

The 2013 Rebecca Caudill Young Readers’ Book Award

Naomi Mellendorf

Library Information Specialist

Robert Crown Elementary School

Wauconda Community Unit School District #118

Wauconda, Illinois

About the RCYRBAThe Rebecca Caudill Young Readers' Book Award (RCYRBA) is a program sponsored by the Illinois Association of Teachers of English, the Illinois Reading Council, and the Illinois School Library Media Association. The program is named after children's author Rebecca Caudill, who lived and worked in Urbana, Illinois. Books honored by this award are selected by a popular vote taken of students between grades 4-8 in the State of Illinois.

Naomi Mellendorf, District #118, December 2012

Jason, an autistic boy who wants to become a writer, relates what his life is like as he tries to make sense of his world.

Anything but Typical By Nora Raleigh Baskin


Gustave has been forced to move from Paris to the countryside after his parents decided it was not safe for Jews to live in the city during World War II. He meets a Catholic girl named Nicole and together they devise a plan to rescue his friend and family members from the Nazi occupied territory.

Black RadishesBy Susan Lynn Meyer


Born to Flyby Michael Ferrari

In 1942, Bird McGill is obsessed with flying. She withholds her judgment while her classmates maintain that the new Japanese American student, Kenji Fujita, is a spy. She realizes Kenji is just as American as she is when they find evidence of real spy activity during their research for a class project.


As Franny Chapman deals with drama at home and with her best friend in 1962, she tries to understand the larger problems in the world after President Kennedy announces that Russia is sending nuclear missiles to Cuba.

CountdownBy Deborah Wiles


Ty has always lived on the ocean floor and one day joins Topside girl Gemma in the frontier's underworld. Together, they seek to stop outlaws who threaten his home and learn that the government may pose an even greater threat.

Dark Lifeby Kat Falls


The orphan Bod, short for Nobody, is taken in by the inhabitants of a graveyard as a child of eighteen months. He is raised lovingly and carefully to the age of eighteen years by a community of ghosts and otherworldly creatures.

The Graveyard BookBy Neil Gaiman


Through a series of poems, a young girl chronicles the life-changing year of 1975, when she, her mother, and her brothers leave Vietnam and resettle in Alabama.

Inside Out and Back AgainBy Thanhha Lai


While living with her Gram in Vermont, Aubrey writes letters as a way of dealing with losing her father and sister in a car accident, and then being abandoned by her grief-stricken mother.

Love, AubreyBy Suzanne LaFleur


Lanesha lives in a tight-knit community in New Orleans' Ninth Ward. She doesn't have a fancy house like her uptown family or lots of friends like the other kids on her street. But what she does have is Mama Ya-Ya, her fiercely loving caretaker and when Mama Ya-Ya's visions show a powerful hurricane--Katrina--fast approaching, it's up to Lanesha to help them both survive the storm.

Ninth WardBy Jewell Parker Rhodes


In the summer of 1968, after traveling from Brooklyn to Oakland, California, to spend a month with the mother they barely know, Delphine and her two younger sisters arrive to a cold welcome as they discover that their mother, a dedicated poet and printer, is resentful of the intrusion of their visit and wants them to attend a nearby Black Panther summer camp.

One Crazy SummerBy Rita Williams-Garcia


Melody is not like most people. She cannot walk or talk, but she has a photographic memory and can remember every detail of everything she has ever experienced. But Melody refuses to be defined by cerebral palsy. And she’s determined to let everyone know it…somehow.

Out of My MindBy Sharon M. Draper


Escaping from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan in the summer of 2001, Fadi and his family immigrate to the San Francisco Bay Area, where Fadi schemes to return to the Pakistani refugee camp where his little sister

was accidentally left behind.

Shooting KabulBy N.H. Senzai


The author relates, in graphic form, her experiences after she injured her two front teeth and had to have surgeries and wear embarrassing braces and headgear, all while dealing with the trials and tribulations of school.

Smile By Raina Telgemeier


Tommy and his friends describe their interactions with a paper finger puppet of Yoda, worn by their weird classmate Dwight, as they try to figure out whether or not the puppet can really predict the future. Includes instructions for making Origami Yoda.

The Strange Case of Origami YodaBy Tom Angleberger


In 1935, when her mother gets a job housekeeping for a woman who does not like children, Turtle is sent to stay with relatives she has never met in far away Key West, Florida and finds herself coming out of the shell she's spent her life building.

Turtle in ParadiseBy Kekla Magoon


In early 1980s New Mexico, Jackson Jones recruits his cousins and sisters to help tend an elderly neighbor's neglected apple orchard for the chance to make big money and, perhaps, to own the orchard.

The Year Money Grew on TreesBy Aaron Hawkins


2013 illinois rebecca caudill award

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