2024 NATIONAL MEDAL
for Museum and Library Service Finalist

Fiction

Fast Pitch

"Shenice Lockwood, captain of the Fulton Firebirds, is hyper-focused when she steps up to the plate. Nothing can stop her from leading her team to the U12 fast-pitch softball regional championship. But life has thrown some curveballs her way"

The Hired Girl

Fourteen-year-old Joan Skraggs, just like the heroines in her beloved novels, yearns for real life and true love. But what hope is there for adventure, beauty, or art on a hardscrabble farm in Pennsylvania where the work never ends? Over the summer of 1911, Joan pours her heart out into her diary as she seeks a new, better life for herself -- because maybe, just maybe, a hired girl cleaning and cooking for six dollars a week can become what a farm girl could only dream of -- a woman with a future. (Inspired by the author's own grandmother's journal.)

The Wednesday Wars

During the 1967 school year, on Wednesday afternoons when all his classmates go to either Catechism or Hebrew school, seventh-grader Holling Hoodhood stays in Mrs. Baker's classroom where they read the plays of William Shakespeare and Holling learns much of value about the world he lives in.

Divergent

This first book in Veronica Roth's #1 New York Times bestselling Divergent series of books is the novel the inspired the major motion picture starring Shailene Woodley, Theo James, and Kate

Winslet. This dystopian series set in a futuristic Chicago has captured the hearts of millions of teen and adult readers.

Magnus Chase series

The Magnus Chase series, written by Rick Riordan, revolves around Magnus Chase, a homeless teenager who discovers he is the son of the Norse god Frey. The series explores Norse mythology in a contemporary setting, focusing on Magnus's quest to prevent Ragnarok, the end of the world, and his journey through the Nine Worlds.