2021 Notable Children's Books in the Language Arts Award Books

BY JEANNE GILLIAM FAIN ON BEHALF OF THE NCBLA 2021 COMMITTEE

The NCBLA 2021 committee has the following charge as a committee: 

The charge of the seven-member national committee is to select 30 books that best exemplify the criteria established for the Notables Award. Books considered for this annual list are works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry written for children, grades K-8. The books selected for the list must meet the following criteria:

1. be published the year preceding the award year (i.e. books published in 2021 are considered for the 2020 list);

2. have an appealing format;

3. be of enduring quality;

4. meet generally accepted criteria of quality for the genre in which they are written; 

5. meet one or more of the following criteria:

• ​deal explicitly with language, such as plays on words, word origins, or the history of language
• demonstrate uniqueness in the use of language or style; and/or
• invite child response or participation

Books transport us into new places and sometimes take us out of the craziness of the world. This was one of those years where we experienced unexpected challenges. I led this committee as we navigated some of the real challenges of the pandemic. To be perfectly honest, in September when we didn’t have the normal number of books, I panicked. 

I am truly thankful for this thoughtful committee that continually encouraged me to keep going as I contacted publishers in hopes of obtaining more physical copies of books. Many publishers returned from turbulent times and physical copies of books were difficult to obtain. However, as a committee member, it’s just easier to dig deeper with a text when you have a physical copy in front of you. Thankfully, publishers started returning to sending physical copies of books at the end of January and in February. We continue to be so thankful for the support many publishers extended to us as they worked diligently to send our committee books. However, that meant, that we had to read on a rigorous schedule and we often had to meet more than twice a month in order to have critical conversations around the literature. 

Here’s a figure that highlights our process as a committee:​

Recurrent Themes from the 2021 NCBLA List

This year, we talked about the importance of story and our criteria. We felt that students in K-8 classrooms needed joyful and hopeful stories. We also came to consensus that sad stories are important also. We felt that the readers needed to see themselves in the pages of picture books and novels. We see the strengths of each book and the themes that stand out across books. 

These themes capture the outstanding books on our 2021 NCBLA list. We are still working with publishers to collect all of the books' covers. But here are a few book covers that highlight some of the incredible books from our list.

Some of the 2021 NCBLA Books

We invite you to see the power of literature across our 2021 NCBLA Book List!

Jeanne Gilliam Fain is s a professor at Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee and Chair of the 2021 Notables Committee.

2021 Notable Children's Books in the Language Arts Selection Committee Members

Vera Ahiyya (Brooklyn Arbor Elementary, New York)
Elizabeth Bemiss (University of West Florida)
Janine Schall (The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley)

Jennifer Summerlin (University of Alabama-Birmingham)
Kathryn Will (University of Maine, Farmington)
​Fran Wilson (Madeira Elementary, Ohio)