2025-2026 SC Junior Book Award

The South Carolina Junior Book Award nominees are appropriate for 6-8 grade levels. Visit SCASL's SC Junior Book Award page to learn more about past nominees and other materials.

102 Days of Lying About Lauren

By Maura Jortner

One hundred and two days ago, 12-year-old Lauren's struggling mother brought her to "America's most famous amusement park" then snuck away while Lauren was on the Cursed Twirling Teacups ride. The clever tween snagged an employee shirt and a broken name badge. Since then, she has been sleeping in the Haunted House of Horrors by night and pretending to be a 16-year-old amusement park walkway sweeper by day. Lauren thinks she's managing reasonably well, but bad weather is coming, and her fragile pretense may not be able to withstand the storm.

Clementine

By Ann Hood

Meet Clementine. She's quippy, sarcastic, and dramatic. And the overwhelming guilt of her sister's death weighs on her so heavily that she no longer feels like living.

As Clementine and her mother attempt to continue their lives after Halley's death, the world around them changes. Clementine's best friend now feels like a stranger. Her new school is full of spoiled, carefree kids. She kisses boys just to feel something. She tries to live in the moment. But ultimately, Clementine feels trapped in a snow globe: the real world is out there, while she's stuck in a world where tears like gallons fall all around her.

Curlfriends: New In Town

By Sharee Miller

Charlie has a foolproof plan for the first day at her new middle school. Even though she's used to starting over as the new kid—thanks to her military family's constant moving—making friends has never been easy for her. But this time, her first impression needs to last, since this is where her family plans to settle for good.

So she's hiding any interests that may seem “babyish,” updating her look, and doing her best to leave her shyness behind her…but is erasing the real Charlie the best way to make friends?

When not everything goes exactly to plan—like, AT ALL—Charlie is ready to give up on making new friendships. Then she meets the Curlfriends, a group of Black girls who couldn't be more different from each other, and learns that maybe there is a place for Charlie to be her true self after all.

Eb & Flow

By Kelly J. Baptist

Ebony and De’Kari (aka Flow) do not get along. How could they when their cafeteria scuffle ended with De'Kari's ruined shoes, Ebony on the ground, and both of them with ten days of at-home suspension? Now Eb and Flow have two weeks to think about and explain their behavior—to their families, to each other, and ultimately to themselves.

Half Moon Summer

By Elaine Vickers

Drew was never much of a runner. Until his dad’s unexpected diagnosis. Mia has nothing better to do. Until she realizes entering Half Moon Bay’s half-marathon could solve her family’s housing problems.

And just like that they decide to spend their entire summer training to run 13.1 miles. Drew and Mia have very different reasons for running, but these two twelve year olds have one crucial thing in common (besides sharing a birthday): Hope. For the future. For their families. And for each other.

Hoops

By Matt Tavares

It's 1976 and on Friday nights in Wilkins, Indiana, it seems like everyone in town shows up to cheer on the boys' basketball team. Cars fill the parking lot and fans pack the gymnasium for every home game.

Most people don't know it, but Wilkins
actually has more than one basketball team. And what the newly formed girls' team lacks in resources they more than make up for with grit and ball skill. But teammates Judi, Cindy, and Lisa aren't satisfied with being treated as an afterthought to the boys. They want equal access to the gym for practices and games, as well as uniforms, transportation to away games and everything else the boys get.

What will it take for the girls' team to be recognized by their community- winning games, packing arenas, bringing home a state championship?

It’s Boba Time for Pearl Li!

By Nicole Chen

A big-hearted Taiwanese American girl aims to gain her family’s acceptance and save her favorite boba tea shop by selling her handcrafted amigurumi dolls. Pearl Li learns how to navigate the world of business, tech, and craft as she fights to save Boba Time, and learns how to advocate for your passions and uncovers big truths about friendship, family, and entrepreneurship along the way.

Land of Broken Promises

By Jane Kuo

After a rocky first year, Anna’s family have settled into life in California—their small restaurant is even turning a profit. Then her parents make a shattering discovery: their visas have expired.

Anna’s world is quickly overwhelmed by unfamiliar words like “undocumented” and “inequality.” She longs to share the towering secret that looms over every aspect of her life with a friend, but her parents strictly forbid her from telling anyone.

As Anna grapples with the complexities of being undocumented, the strain that it places on her family, and the loneliness of keeping it all to herself, she has to wonder—if America is the promised land, why does everything she’s hoped for feel like a lie?

Lasagna Means I Love You

By Kate O’Shaughnessy

Nan was all the family Mo ever needed. But suddenly she’s gone, and Mo finds herself in foster care after her uncle decides she’s not worth sticking around for.

Nan left her a notebook and advised her to get a hobby, like ferret racing or palm reading.

But how could a hobby fix anything in her newly topsy-turvy life

Then Mo finds a handmade cookbook filled with someone else’s family recipes. Even though Nan never cooked, Mo can’t tear her eyes away. Not so much from the recipes, but the stories attached to them. Though, when she makes herself a pot of soup, it is every bit as comforting as the recipe notes said.

Soon Mo finds herself asking everyone she meets for their family recipes. Teaching herself to make them. Collecting the stories behind them. Building a website to share them. And, okay, secretly hoping that a long-lost relative will find her and give her a family recipe all her own.

But when everything starts to unravel again, Mo realizes that if she wants a family recipe—or a real family—she’s going to have to make it up herself.

Louder Than Hunger

By John Schu

Jake volunteers at a nursing home because he likes helping people. He likes skating and singing, playing Bingo and Name That Tune, and reading mysteries and comics aloud to his teachers. He also likes avoiding people his own age . . . and the cruelty of mirrors . . . and food. Jake has read about kids like him in books—the weird one, the outsider—and would do anything not to be that kid, including shrink himself down to nothing. But the less he eats, the bigger he feels. How long can Jake punish himself before he truly disappears? A fictionalized account of the author’s experiences and emotions living in residential treatment facilities as a young teen with an eating disorder, Louder than Hunger is a triumph of raw honesty. With a deeply personal afterword for context, this much-anticipated verse novel is a powerful model for muffling the destructive voices inside, managing and articulating pain, and embracing self-acceptance, support, and love.

Maid For It

By Jamie Sumner

Now that Franny and her newly sober mom have moved to a cozy apartment above a laundromat, Franny’s looking forward to a life where her biggest excitement is getting top grades in math class. But when Franny’s mom gets injured in a car accident, their fragile life begins to crumble. There’s no way her mom can keep her job cleaning houses, which means she can’t pay the bills. Franny can’t forget what happened the last time her mom was hurt: the pills that were supposed to help became an addiction, until rehab brought them to Mimi’s laundromat and the support group she hosts.

Franny will not let addiction win again, even if she has to blackmail a school rival to help her clean houses. She’ll make the money and keep her mom sober—there’s no other choice. But what happens if this is one problem she can’t solve on her own?

Parachute Kids

By Betty C. Tang

Feng-Li can’t wait to discover America with her family! But after an action-packed vacation, her parents deliver shocking news: They are returning to Taiwan and leaving Feng-Li and her older siblings in California on their own.

Suddenly, the three kids must fend for themselves in a strange new world—and get along. Starting a new school, learning a new language, and trying to make new friends while managing a household is hard enough, but Bro and Sis’s constant bickering makes everything worse. Thankfully, there are some hilarious moments to balance the stress and loneliness. But as tensions escalate—and all three kids get tangled in a web of bad choices—can Feng-Li keep her family together?

Remember Us

By Jacqueline Woodson

Sage dreams of being a pro-basketball player. Sage and her sweet and wise best friend, Freddy, are trying to understand what it means to live in a world that feels like it’s burning.

Ruptured

By Joanne Rossmassler Fritz

The novel in verse follows a 13-year-old girl on vacation with her parents. Her mother tells her a painful secret just before suffering a brain aneurysm rupture, and the family must learn to navigate a difficult new existence.

Something Like Home

By Andrea Beatriz Arango

A moving novel in verse in which a lost dog helps a lonely girl find a way home to her family . . .

only for them to find family in each other along the way.

Tagging Freedom

By Rhonda Roumani

Kareem Haddad of Damascus, Syria, never dreamed of becoming a graffiti artist. But when a group of boys from another town tag subversive slogans outside their school, and another boy is killed while in custody, Kareem and his friends are inspired to start secretly tag messages of freedom around their city.

Meanwhile, in the United States, his cousin, Samira, has been trying to make her own mark. Anxious to fit in at school, she joins the Spirit Squad where her natural artistic ability attracts the attention of the popular leader. Then Kareem is sent to live with Sam’s family, and their worlds collide. As graffitied messages appear around town and all eyes turn to Kareem, Sam must make a choice: does she shy away to protect her new social status, or does she stand with her cousin?

The Astronaut’s Guide to Leaving the Planet

By Terry Virts

A kid's guide to leaving the planet from someone who's done it! Former astronaut Terry Virts guides readers through the practical elements of becoming an astronaut, along with the wonders (and challenges!) of space travel. With insider information on training, piloting a ship, and working in space, readers and aspiring astronauts will be inspired to start their own journey to the stars.

The Fire, The Water, and Maudie McGinn

By Sally J. Pla

Maudie always looks forward to the summers she spends in California with her dad. But this year, she must keep a troubling secret about her home life—one that her mom warned her never to tell. Maudie wants to confide in her dad about her stepdad's anger, but she’s scared.

When a wildfire strikes, Maudie and her dad are forced to evacuate to the beach town where he grew up. It’s another turbulent wave of change. But now, every morning, from their camper, Maudie can see surfers bobbing in the water. She desperately wants to learn, but could she ever be brave enough?

As Maudie navigates unfamiliar waters, she makes friends—and her autism no longer feels like the big deal her mom makes it out to be. But her secret is still threatening to sink her. Will Maudie find the strength to reveal the awful truth—and maybe even find some way to stay with Dad—before summer is over?

The Lost Year

By Katherine Marsh

Thirteen-year-old Matthew is miserable. His journalist dad is stuck overseas indefinitely, and his mom has moved in his one-hundred-year-old great-grandmother to ride out the Covid pandemic, adding to his stress and isolation. But when Matthew finds a tattered black-and-white photo in his great-grandmother’s belongings, he discovers a clue to a hidden chapter of her past—one that will lead to a life-shattering family secret.

Set in alternating timelines that connect the present day to the 1930s and the US to the USSR, The Lost Year sheds fresh light on the Holodomor—the horrific famine that killed millions of Ukrainians, which the Soviet government covered up for decades.

The Lost Year is an incredibly timely, page-turning story of family, survival, and sacrifice.

The Mona Lisa Vanishes

By Nick Day

On a hot August day in Paris, just over a century ago, a desperate guard burst into the office of the director of the Louvre and shouted, La Joconde, c’est partie! The Mona Lisa, she’s gone!

No one knew who was behind the heist. Was it an international gang of thieves? Was it an art-hungry American millionaire? Was it the young Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, who was about to remake the very art of painting?

Travel back to an extraordinary period of revolutionary change: turn-of-the-century Paris. Walk its backstreets. Meet the infamous thieves—and detectives—of the era. And then slip back further in time and follow Leonardo da Vinci, painter of the Mona Lisa, through his dazzling, wondrously weird life. Discover the secret at the heart of the Mona Lisa—the most famous painting in the world should never have existed at all.

Search