We are pleased to announce the 2022 Association for Mormon Letters Awards finalists in Young Adult Novel, Middle Grade Novel, and Picture Book. The final awards will be announced and presented on April 29, as part of the 2023 Association for Mormon Letters Virtual Conference. We will be announcing the other category finalists over the coming week. The finalists and winners are chosen by juries of authors, academics, and critics. The announcements include book blurbs and author biographies, usually adapted from the author and publisher websites.
Young Adult Novel
Orson Scott Card. Wakers. Margaret K. McElderry Books.
The Side-Step Trilogy #1. Laz is a side-stepper: a teen with the incredible power to jump his consciousness to alternate versions of himself in parallel worlds. All his life, there was no mistake that a little side-stepping couldn’t fix. Until Laz wakes up one day in a cloning facility on a seemingly abandoned Earth. Laz finds himself surrounded by hundreds of other clones, all dead, and quickly realizes that he too must be a clone of his original self. Laz has no idea what happened to the world he remembers as vibrant and bustling only yesterday, and he struggles to survive in the barren wasteland he’s now trapped in. But the question that haunts him isn’t why was he created, but instead, who woke him up…and why?
Orson Scott Card is the author of the best-selling novels Ender’s Game, Ender’s Shadow, and Speaker for the Dead, and the Book of Mormon-based science fiction series Homecoming (beginning with Memory of Earth). Besides these and other science fiction novels, Card writes contemporary fantasy (Magic Street, Enchantment, Lost Boys), biblical novels (Stone Tables, Rachel and Leah), the American frontier fantasy series The Tales of Alvin Maker (beginning with Seventh Son), poetry (An Open Book), and many plays and scripts. He has won AML Novel Awards for the Mormon historical fiction novel A Woman of Destiny (1984, later republished as Saints), Xenocide (1991), and Lost Boys (1992), and was presented with the 2017 Smith-Pettit Foundation Award for Outstanding Contribution to Mormon Letters.
Joanna Ho. The Silence that Binds Us. HarperTeen
Maybelline Chen isn’t the Chinese Taiwanese American daughter her mother expects her to be. May prefers hoodies over dresses and wants to become a writer. When asked, her mom can’t come up with one specific reason for why she’s proud of her only daughter. May’s beloved brother, Danny, on the other hand, has just been admitted to Princeton. But Danny secretly struggles with depression, and when he dies by suicide, May’s world is shattered. In the aftermath, racist accusations are hurled against May’s parents for putting too much “pressure” on him. May’s father tells her to keep her head down. Instead, May challenges these ugly stereotypes through her writing. Yet the consequences of speaking out run much deeper than anyone could foresee. Who gets to tell our stories, and who gets silenced? It’s up to May to take back the narrative.
Joanna Ho is passionate about equity in books and education. She has been an English teacher, a dean, and a teacher professional development mastermind. She is currently the vice principal of a high school in the San Francisco Bay Area. Homemade chocolate chip cookies, outdoor adventures, and dance parties with her kids make Joanna’s eyes crinkle into crescent moons. Her books for young readers include the picture book Eyes That Kiss in the Corners.
Emily Inouye Huey. Beneath the Wide Silk Sky. Scholastic
Sam Sakamoto doesn’t have space in her life for dreams. With the recent death of her mother, Sam’s focus is the farm, which her family will lose if they can’t make one last payment. There’s no time for her secret and unrealistic hope of becoming a photographer, no matter how skilled she’s become. But Sam doesn’t know that an even bigger threat looms on the horizon. On December 7, 1941, Japanese airplanes attack the US naval base at Pearl Harbor. Fury towards Japanese Americans ignites across the country. In Sam’s community in Washington State, the attack gives those who already harbor prejudice an excuse to hate. As Sam’s family wrestles with intensifying discrimination and even violence, Sam forges a new and unexpected friendship with her neighbor Hiro Tanaka. When he offers Sam a way to resume her photography, she realizes she can document the bigotry around her — if she’s willing to take the risk. When the United States announces that those of Japanese descent will be forced into “relocation camps,” Sam knows she must act or lose her voice forever. She engages in one last battle to leave with her identity — and her family — intact.
Emily Inouye Huey is the daughter, granddaughter, and great-granddaughter of Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II. Her family was evacuated from their homes and farms in California and Washington. Her grandparents met and married in Wyoming’s Heart Mountain Relocation Center, and her father was born in the camp hospital. When the war ended, the family was sent to Utah, where they started over and where Emily still lives, now with her husband and four children. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University and teaches at Salt Lake Community College. This is her debut novel.
Kara McDowell. This Might Get Awkward. Scholastic
Seventeen-year-old Gemma’s favorite kind of beach is an empty one. Social interactions are too much for her to handle. She can’t even bring herself to speak to her longtime crush, Beau Booker, without losing sleep over her own awkwardness. Thrust together, he falls off a boat, hits his head, and ends up in a coma. After rescuing Beau from the water, Gemma is mistaken for Beau’s girlfriend by his friends and family, including his mysterious older brother, Griff, who has returned to town after a year away. Gemma tries to correct the record, but her social anxiety (and a nosy reporter) gets in the way at every turn. Before she knows it, she’s in too deep to backtrack. And when Beau’s warm, boisterous family pulls Gemma into their orbit, she realizes how much she wants to keep them in her life. For the first time, Gemma has everything she’s ever wanted: friends, big family dinners, and Griff–a boy who she can be herself around. But how can she embrace her new dream life when everything is built on a lie?
Kara McDowell graduated from Arizona State University with a BA in English Literature, and worked as a freelance writer. She is the author of the young adult novels Just for Clicks and One Way or Another, which was a 2020 AML YA Novel Award finalist. She lives with her husband and a trio of rowdy boys in Mesa, Arizona, where she divides her time between writing, baking, and wishing for rain.
Erin Stewart. The Words We Keep. Declorate.
A beautifully realistic, relatable story about mental health–anxiety, perfectionism, depression–and the healing powers of art. It’s been three months since The Night on the Bathroom Floor–when Lily found her older sister Alice hurting herself. Ever since then, Lily has been desperately trying to keep things together, for herself and for her family. But now Alice is coming home from her treatment program and it is becoming harder for Lily to ignore all of the feelings she’s been trying to outrun. Enter Micah, a new student at school with a past of his own. He was in treatment with Alice and seems determined to get Lily to process not only Alice’s experience, but her own. Because Lily has secrets, too. Compulsions she can’t seem to let go of and thoughts she can’t drown out. When Lily and Micah embark on an art project for school involving finding poetry in unexpected places, she realizes that it’s the words she’s been swallowing that desperately want to break through.
Erin Stewart grew up in Virginia and now makes her home in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains with her husband and their three children. Erin loves using her background in journalism to research and write fiction based on real life. A heart failure survivor and adoptive mother, she believes life throws plot twists and people in our path for a reason–always. She is the author of Scars Like Wings, which was a 2019 AML YA Novel Award finalist.
Middle Grade Novel
Dustin Hansen. The Legend of the Dream Giants. Shadow Mountain
When he was very young, Berg’s mother hid him in a cave and led an angry mob of villagers away, sacrificing her own life to protect her son. In all the years since, Berg has lived alone, the only reminders of his family are his mother’s satchel and his recurring dreams of a white bear who shares a magical sand from a fallen star. When the white bear touches Berg with the star-blue sand, he feels safe and happy in his dreams. Sometimes, when he feels lonely, he will risk entering a village to trade a smooth river rock or a feather for food. He’s really searching for kindness, companionship, and, maybe one day, someone who will want to get to know him and be his friend. But with every attempt he makes, people only see his massive size and cruelly chase him away, thinking he is Ünhold–a giant and a monster. Whoever this Ünhold is, Berg also fears him and hopes they never meet. The story follows Berg on his journey and is told through text and graphic novel-style illustrations of beautiful dream sequences that reveal Berg’s hopes and memories. Berg’s mother appears to him in his dreams as a white bear, patient, nurturing and protective, and he sees himself as a little bear cub. Berg is often unsure what exactly the dreams mean, but sometimes they describe things which are about to happen or give him answers to problems he is facing.
Dustin Hansen is an international award-winning video game developer and has been creating story and art for the children’s entertainment world for decades. He has also worked in theme parks, and as the Innovation Director for Hasbro Inc. He is the author of the Microsaurs series, a graphic novel My Video Game Ate My Homework, and a nonfiction bestseller, Game On! Video Game History from Pong and Pac-Man to Mario, Minecraft and More. As a dyslexic writer, Dustin’s drive to combine visuals with the written word has been a thread throughout his career.
Amanda Rawson Hill. The Hope of Elephants. Charlesbridge
Cass and her parents haven’t let her dad’s cancer stop them from having a good life–full of love and poems and one annual World Series game. Now that Dad’s cancer is back, Cass overhears the doctor say that she has a 50% chance of inheriting her dad’s genetic mutation, Li-Fraumeni syndrome. There’s a genetic test Cass can take that will tell her for sure. There’s still so much she wants to do–play baseball, study at the zoo, travel the world with her best friend, Jayla. Would it be better not to know? When it turns out Dad’s cancer is worse this time, Cass is determined to keep up their World Series tradition while navigating all the change and uncertainty that lies ahead.
Amanda Rawson Hill never thought she was a writer growing up. But then the need to write tugged at her. The Hope of Elephants is based on an inherited genetic syndrome that affects members of Amanda’s family. Amanda is also the author of one picture book, You’ll Find Me, which was a 2020 AML Picture Book Award finalist, and a middle-grade novel, The Three Rules of Everyday Magic. Amanda also enjoys playing the piano, knitting, reading, homeschooling her children, playing board games, and eating kale.
Lindsey Leavitt. Willis Wilbur Wows the World. Penguin Workshop
Nine-year-old Willis Wilbur had his summer figured out. He and his best friend, Shelley, were going to Band Camp, and he was going to learn how to play the sousaphone. But when Shelley is whisked off to Hawaii for a summer with her family, Willis is left staring down the long, boring road of an empty summer. Or even worse–eight long weeks of Day Camp. So Willis decides to try something new. He’s going to MAKE A DATE WITH DESTINY. And after spotting a flyer for a local business competition, he finds exactly what his true calling really is: becoming the Neighborhood Life Coach. A kid helping other kids with kids’ problems. His niche, he discovers. And he was going to be great at it. The best at it. So good, that he was going to become wildly, ridiculously famous. All he needed were some clients… The book features illustrations by Daniel Duncan.
Lindsey Leavitt is the author of over a dozen books for kids, tweens, and teens, many of which have appeared on lists like YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults and Amazon’s Best Books of the Year. She lives with her large blended family in the Utah mountains. A former elementary school teacher and present-day writer/mom/speaker/party animal, Lindsey uses her teaching background to present to schools across the nation. LIndsey has an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Jennifer A. Nielsen. Lines of Courage. Scholastic
World War I stretches its cruel fingers across Europe, where five young people, each from different backgrounds and nations, face the terror of battle, the deprivations of hunger, and all the awful challenges of war. Felix, from Austria-Hungary, longs for the bravery to resist Jewish deportations before his own family can be taken. Kara, from Britain, dreams of someday earning her Red Cross pin and working as a nurse — or even a doctor. Juliette, of France, hopes her family can remain knitted together, despite her father’s imprisonment, as the war’s longest battle stretches on and on. Elsa, from Germany, hopes her homing pigeon might one day bring her a friend from out of the chaos. And Dimitri, of Russia, wants only to survive the front, where he’s been sent with no weapon. None of them will find exactly what they want. But the winds of fate may cross their paths to give each of them just what they need.
Jennifer A. Nielsen is the acclaimed author of the bestselling Ascendance Series, beginning with The False Prince, as well as The Traitor’s Game and its sequels Mark of the Thief trilogy as well as critically acclaimed historical thrillers A Night Divided, Resistance, Words on Fire, Rescue, and Lines of Courage. She lives in northern Utah with her family, and is probably sneaking in a bite of dark chocolate right now. Nielsen has previously won the AML Middle Grade Novel Award for The False Prince (2012) and Words on Fire (2019), and was a finalist four other times. She has won eight Whitney Awards.
J. Scott Savage. Secrets of the Looking Glass. Shadow Mountain
The Lost Wonderland Diaries, volume 2. When a dark creature called the Bandersnatch steals Lewis Carroll’s lost diaries, Celia and Tyrus try to get it back but are tricked into passing through a magic mirror into the Looking-Glass World, a place where everything–themselves included–are divided in two, like identical twins. Celia’s astute logic and Tyrus’s exceptional imagination now belong to their mirror images, Lia and Ty, who are generals in the Red Queen’s Army, which is at war against the White Kingdom. Left without their greatest problem-solving skills, Celia and Tyrus must rely on each other more than ever as they play a massive game of chess to try to catch their mirror images, who always seem to be one step ahead of them. Along the way, they engage in a rhyming battle with Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, seek advice from Humpty and Dumpty, and learn how to believe in the impossible from the White Queen, who remembers the future as if it were the past.
J. Scott Savage is the author of the Mysteries of Cove and Farworld middle-grade fantasy series. He won a Whitney Award for Dark Memories (2013), and was a finalist eight more times. He has published more than seventeen novels, visited more than 1,400 schools, and taught dozens of writing classes. He has four children, five grandchildren, and lives with his wife, Jennifer, in a windy valley of the Rocky Mountains.
Picture Books
Raeleigh Wilkinson. Bedtime Stories for Girls of Destiny. Cedar Fort
You already know the incredible stories of Emma Smith and Eliza R. Snow and their instrumental contributions to the foundation of the Church, but the strength of Latter-day Saint women didn’t end there. This compilation of forty-five brief biographies of remarkable women from thirty nations throughout Church history is accompanied by beautiful portraits illustrated by Latter-day Saint women. Some of these women you know, and all of them you’ll want to know, including 
– Lidia Zakrewski, a teenager who delivered messages for the Polish Resistance in WWII and who paused a battle with the power of music – Priscilla Sampson-Davis, a schoolteacher who translated the Book of Mormon into the Fante language of Ghana – Noelle Pikus-Pace, an Olympic skeleton athlete whose faith overcame an injury that doctors expected might end her career – Sahar Qumsiyeh, a Palestinian statistics professor who spent over a decade risking her life to attend church in Jerusalem From athletes to artists, teachers to translators, missionaries to mothers, and scientists to spies, the stories of these extraordinary Saints are sure to inspire any woman to follow her passion and embrace her destiny as a daughter of God.
When Raeleigh Wilkinson was a preschooler, her uncle found her in furious tears because her cousins told her “only boys can be doctors”. Although Raeleigh turned out to be far too squeamish to pursue a career in medicine, she always carried her stubborn conviction that girls can do anything. Raeleigh studied mechanical engineering, and she has worked on robots, rockets, and roller coasters. Raeleigh is a lifelong book lover. She loves long walks to the park with her husband and two children, stealing time to write stories during nap time, and spending far too much time in bakeries. Bedtime Stories for Girls of Destiny is her first book.
Charlotte Jones Voiklis & Jennifer Adams (authors), Andelina Lirius (illustrator). A Book, Too, Can Be A Star: The Story of Madeleine L’Engle and the Making of A Wrinkle in Time.
When Madeleine L’Engle was very small, she often found herself awake at night, marveling at the stars. They guided her throughout her life, making her feel part of a big and exciting world, even when she felt alone. They made her want to ask big questions–Why are we here? What is my place in the universe?–and let her imagination take flight. Books, too, were like stars–asking questions and proposing answers. Books kept Madeleine company, and soon, she began to write and share her own. But would other people see the wonder she found in the world? Written by Madeleine’s granddaughter Charlotte Jones Voiklis and bestselling picture-book author Jennifer Adams, A Book, Too, Can Be a Star follows the life of one of the world’s greatest creators–and gives children encouragement to lead a creative, inquisitive life.
Jennifer Adams is the author of more than forty books, including the best-selling BabyLit series, which introduces young children to the world of classic literature. It has sold 2 million copies. Her work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Parents Magazine, Vanity Fair, and Wired. Jennifer manages the children’s book line at Sounds True and works some evenings as an independent bookseller at The King’s English bookshop. She lives in Salt Lake City with her husband, Bill Dunford, who is also a writer.
Annie Bailey (author) and Jen Corace (illustrator). Mud! Abrams Appleseed
Gloopy, gloppy, gorgeous mud.
Ooozy, smoozy, soupy mud.
Stomp it, poke it, squeeze it, whack it,
Pack it into bricks and stack it.
This very young picture book from author Annie Bailey and illustrator Jen Corace celebrates all things mud! The rhyming text is full of onomatopoeia and humor, and follows a brother and sister as they go outside on a rainy day to play in the mud and then clean up–only for the muddy fun to start up again.
Annie Bailey is a children’s author and songwriter. She developed her mud pie-making skills at a very young age and now passes this knowledge on to her four sons as they explore the outdoors surrounding their home in rural Idaho. This is her first picture book. Her previous works include the board books 10 Little Tractors, 10 Little Excavators, and There Is Joy, a children’s album. Jen Corace is the illustrator of Small World by Ishta Mercurio and Little Pea, Little Hoot, and Little Oink by Amy Krouse Rosenthal, among other books for young readers. She also creates fine art, with a focus on the Victorian and Edwardian eras. Corace lives in Providence, Rhode Island.
Shawna J. C. Tenney. Pirates Don’t Dance. Sleeping Bear
Jack longs to be a pirate. He loves everything about the job, from the peacefulness of the ocean to the opportunity to make new friends to the excitement of exotic travel. Jack also loves to dance, from the graceful glide of the glissade to the energetic leap of the grand jeté; to the controlled kick of the grand battement. In fact, Jack often dances as he does his pirate apprentice chores. Unfortunately, Captain Squinty Eye’s number one pirate-ship rule is PIRATES DON’T DANCE. Dancing is too silly and not fitting for a rough, tough pirate. What will it take for Jack to convince Captain Squinty Eye that 
dancing is not a bad thing, and may even help Jack be a better pirate? Back matter includes explanations of dance movements, as well as definitions of pirate speak.
Shawna J. C. Tenney wonders if having type A+ blood helps her to make A+ artwork (hey, it’s possible! Okay, probably not). When she isn’t draining the life out of chocolate bars, she can be found in her studio creating stories like her author-illustrated picture book Brunhilda’s Backwards Day. She lives in Utah with her two kids, two cats, and one husband.
Shannon Hale and LeUyen Pham. Pretty Perfect Kitty Corn. Abrams.
Unicorn is perfect. Everybody thinks so. He yearns to look the way everyone thinks he should. But when a fumble makes Unicorn feel like a big, ugly goof, he can’t help but wonder: If he’s not absolutely perfect and majestic all the time, will Kitty even want to be his best friend anymore?
The magical, bestselling team of Shannon Hale and LeUyen Pham put their horns together once again for a heart-bursting story featuring an utterly adorable kitty-corn pair, showing readers that it’s okay to embrace our flaws and share the messy parts of ourselves.
LeUyen Pham and Shannon Hale are the team behind the bestselling picture book Itty-Bitty Kitty-Corn, the bestselling graphic novels Real Friends and Forever Friends, both of which won AML Comics Awards, and, with Dean Hale, the early chapter book series The Princess in Black. They’ve made a bunch of other books, too. They are both: moms of kids who aren’t afraid to get messy, wives to husbands who make art, Honor award winners (Caldecott and Newbery), caretakers of cats, and believers in unicorns. LeUyen lives in Los Angeles, Shannon lives in Utah, and with each other, they know they can be–and make–anything. Besides her work with LeUyen, Shannon has won AML Young Adult Novel Awards in 2002 (Enna’s Burning) and 2003 (Princess Academy), and has been a finalist many times.