Dominican Professor of Information Studies Helps Select Winners of Prestigious Youth Literature Award

Choosing the best children’s and young adult literature from a list of roughly 2,000 titles can be a daunting task.

It was a challenge Dr. Sujin Huggins accepted this year as one of three judges for the 2022 Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards recognizing excellence in youth picture books, fiction and nonfiction.

“I always look for difference,” said Huggins, a professor at Dominican University’s School of Information Studies, about what stands out in a sea of books that are up for award consideration. “Anything that is not run-of-the-mill and common, something I’ve not seen before usually captures my attention.”

This year’s three winners of the prestigious Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards exemplify difference: Each tells the stories of people of color — a genre that American youth literature has frequently overlooked.

“We need stories that are multi-faceted, that will give us a different perspective and insight into the people we live next to or down the street from,” believes Huggins, who was born and raised in Trinidad where books on the African diaspora and characters of color are commonplace.

The contest is a good fit for Huggins, who, in her role at Dominican, specializes in library youth service with an emphasis on children’s literature. This was her first time serving as a judge for the Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards, though she has judged for other prestigious youth literary contests as well, notably the Coretta Scott King Book Awards honoring African American authors and illustrators, and the U.S. Board on Books for Young People Hans Christian Andersen Award.

Selected as the 2022 Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards Picture Book Award was Ain’t Burned All the Bright, written by Jason Reynolds and illustrated by Jason Griffin. A nontraditional picture book, it tells a story, through a mix of images and sparse text, of the impact the COVID-19 pandemic, police violence and protest have on a Black family in America.

“It’s almost like you are reading a diary of images and words that capture an experience we can all identify with on an enduring and personal level,” Huggins explained.

The award for Fiction and Poetry went to All my Rage, by Sabaa Tahir, a lyrical, emotional young adult novel about two Pakistani-American families.

“I think we all agreed it was a really gripping story told in multiple narrative perspectives — but seamlessly so — and reflecting an immigrant experience in America,” Huggins said. “It was a story that left me speechless.”

In the nonfiction category, the award went to Black Birds in the Sky: The Story and Legacy of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, by Brandy Colbert. Huggins called the book “very well researched, very well written and accessible for a younger audience on a painful and extremely relevant topic.”

Culling through roughly 2,000 books submitted by book publishers and choosing the best three — in additional to six honorable mentions — over just a few months' time wasn’t easy, particularly for longer, more detailed texts.

As a general rule, any book that quickly sparked excitement and interest with the individual judges was put into play for award consideration and shared with the others on the panel to read, Huggins said.

“If nothing jumps out 20 to 50 pages in, it’s OK to say it’s not a contender,” she said.

The quality of the writing was obviously important in the decision-making as well.

As for current trends in youth literature, Huggins pointed to books that focus on diversity, political themes, the pandemic and “making sense of the contemporary world,” Huggins said.

“A lot of books are helping children to understand the complexities of gender and sexual orientation,” she added. “They are being created for younger and younger audiences and push for inclusivity and acceptance. We are seeing that more and more.”

These are books that are frequently challenged when they appear on library shelves, but despite this, more titles continue to be published, Huggins noted.