Steve Sheinkin wins 2020 Edwards Award

PHILADELPHIA – Steve Sheinkin wins the 2020 Edwards Award for “Bomb: The Race to Build - and Steal- the World's Most Dangerous Weapon,” “The Port Chicago 50: Disaster, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civil Rights,” and “The Notorious Benedict Arnold: A True Story of Adventure, Heroism, & Treachery,” all published by Roaring Brook Press, an imprint of Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group, and “Lincoln's Grave Robbers,” published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic Inc. The Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), a division of the American Library Association (ALA), announced the award today at the ALA Midwinter Meeting & Exhibits held Jan. 24 - 28, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Sheinkin is a powerful force in today’s ever-expanding field of nonfiction for teens, a genre that offers a particularly unique avenue for teens to become aware of themselves and to answer their questions about their role in society and in the world.  Sheinkin’s ability to tell a story that is contextualized with rich details about the time and place that surround it allows teens to delve deeply into a range of issues and ideas.  Like any great fiction writer, Sheinkin brings his characters to life by building a plot that gently unfolds, allowing the reader a chance to get to know the history on a very personal level.

Sheinkin’s outstanding ability to balance historical fact while also telling a compelling story is unparalleled.  As Edwards Committee chair Dawn McMillan notes, “The digital age presents new challenges for teens in navigating information sources. Sheinkin provides readers with extremely well researched information, including primary sources, photographs, quotations, and letters, in such a way that readers can be assured that the engaging story they are reading is true.” 

Steve Sheinkin will be honored at a luncheon during YALSA’s YA Services Symposium in Reno, Nevada, Nov. 6-8, 2020. The award is sponsored by School Library Journal.

The award is named in honor of the late Margaret A. Edwards, a pioneer in providing library services to young adults. Through her work at Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, Edwards demonstrated that only through literature would young adults move beyond themselves into a larger world.

Members of the 2020 Edwards Committee are: Chair Dawn McMillan, Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, Ohio; Therese G. Bigelow, Coupeville, Wash.; Lisa W. Brennan, St. Christopher's School, Richmond, Va.; April Dawkins, University of North Carolina Greensboro, North Carolina; and Rachel Lynn Wadham, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah.

The mission of the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) is to support library staff in alleviating the challenges teens face, and in putting all teens ‒ especially those with the greatest needs ‒ on the path to successful and fulfilling lives. For more information about YALSA or to access national guidelines and other resources go to www.ala.org/yalsa, or contact the YALSA office by phone, 800-545-2433, ext. 4390; or e-mail: yalsa@ala.org.