West Virginia Children's Choice Book Awards: Home

Winner

After learning that her family adopted her, Valli runs away from home to live on the streets of Kolkata, India, where she begs, steals, and resists help from a doctor who reveals that she has leprosy

2nd place -- tie

An orphaned Syrian brown bear cub is adopted by Polish soldiers during World War II and serves for five years as their mischievous mascot in Iran and Italy. Based on a true story.

2nd place -- tie

Twelve-year-olds Duncan Dorfman, April Blunt, and Nate Saviano meet at the Youth Scrabble Tournament where, although each has a different reason for attending and for needing to win, they realize that something more important is at stake than the grand prize.

3rd place

Having lost his mother and his hearing in a short time, twelve-year-old Ben leaves his Minnesota home in 1977 to seek the father he never knew in New York City, and meets there Rose, who is also longing for something missing from her life. Ben's story is told in words; Rose's in pictures.

4th place

Old Edna Cornblossumis gone, and the whole neighborhood misses her. Welcome to Arlington Court in Charleston, WV, where a trio of ten-year-olds, two eccentric adults, and a mischievous calico cat discover that together they carry their friend's beloved memory forward in their own lives.

When Ivan, a gorilla who has lived for years in a down-and-out circus-themed mall, meets Ruby, a baby elephant that has been added to the mall, he decides that he must find her a better life. Newbery Award Winner, 2013

Henrietta and her pals Gary and Rose all have headaches with an unknown cause and experience other strange incidents--including the appearance of a threatening creature called the Wikkeling--and are hopeful that an ancient bestiary can help solve these mysteries.

Malcolm, a smaller than average rat, loves life at McKenna School and the secret society of classroom pets that keep children out of trouble, but when Aggy the iguana disappears Malcolm must use all of his ratty persistence to prove his innocence and save her.

Emma is Jess's little sister ... and her dilemma. How can one small girl be sweet, funny, imaginative, playful, and affectionate as well as a clinging vine, brat, tattletale, and nuisance-all at the same time? The highlights and low points of this sibling relationship are insightfully evoked in short and simple poems. Nancy Carpenter's graceful illustrations perceptively complement Kristine O'Connell George's agile poems

Unlike the other Birthmothers in her utopian community, teenaged Claire forms an attachment to her baby, feeling a great loss when he is taken to the Nurturing Center to be adopted by a family unit. This is the final book in The Giver Quartet.

Lulu, who loves animals, brings an abandoned duck egg to school, even though her teacher has banned Lulu from bringing animals to school ever again.

From the first ice, a thin skin on a bucket of water, through thickly-iced fields, streams, and gardens, a girl, her family, and friends anticipate and enjoy a winter of skating, ending with an ice show complete with costumes, refreshments, and clowns.

When a failed wheat crop nearly bankrupts the Betterly family, Pa pulls twelve-year-old May from school and hires her out to a couple new to the Kansas frontier.

Tired of his twelve-hour shifts and facing danger daily, Bitty, a canary whose courage more than makes up for his small size, treks to the state capital in Charleston to try to improve working conditions in coal mines.

Seventh-grader Georges adjusts to moving from a house to an apartment, his father's efforts to start a new business, his mother's extra shifts as a nurse, being picked on at school, and Safer, a boy who wants his help spying on another resident of their building.

Washed ashore as a baby in tiny Tupelo Landing, North Carolina, Mo LoBeau, now eleven, and her best friend Dale turn detective when the amnesiac Colonel, owner of a cafe and co-parent of Mo with his cook, Miss Lana, seems implicated in a murder.

When Ms. Albert teaches a lesson on kindness, Chloe realizes that she and her friends have been wrong in making fun of new student Maya's shabby clothes and refusing to play with her.