2020 Caldecott Awards

The Cambridge Public Library has a very special connection to this year’s Caldecott Award process. Our own Manager of Youth Services, Julie Roach, was chair for the 2020 Caldecott Committee. The Committee was comprised of 15 members of ALA’s Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), selected from across the country.

The Undefeated, illustrated by Kadir Nelson and written by Kwame Alexander, is the 2020 Caldecott Medal winner. The book was published by Versify, an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. The Randolph Caldecott Medal awards the most distinguished American picture book for children.

Three Caldecott Honor Books also were named: Bear Came Along, illustrated by LeUyen Pham, written by Richard T. Morris and published by Little, Brown and Company, a division of Hachette Book Group; Double Bass Blues, illustrated by Rudy Gutierrez, written by Andrea J. Loney and published by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC; and Going Down Home with Daddy, illustrated by Daniel Minter, written by Kelly Starling Lyons and published by Peachtree Publishers.

The awards were announced during the American Library Association Midwinter Conference in Philadelphia on January 27.

Ms. Roach has chaired the Boston Globe Horn Book Award Committee, the Theodore Seuss Geisel Committee, and previously served on the Caldecott Committee as well. She also reviews children's literature regularly for The Horn Book Magazine and School Library Journal.

Learn more by visiting http://www.ala.org/news/press-releases/2020/01/jerry-craft-kadir-nelson-win-newbery-caldecott-medals