Indigenous Voices Book List #CYBILS2024

November is National American Indian Heritage Month, a time to “celebrate the traditions, languages and stories of Native American, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, and affiliated Island communities.”

As we have done in the past, we are celebrating the histories, rich cultures, and vast contributions of Native peoples in books for children and teens. This list includes books written and illustrated by Native peoples that have been nominated and submitted for the 2024 CYBILS Awards.

In 2021, Melissa Fox lamented that there were only ten titles on our Indigenous Voices book list. This year, there are 24 25 books. Find all of the books on our Indigenous Voices a CYBILS Awards Book List at Bookshop.org.

A book included in this list doesn’t imply anything about its eligibility for a CYBILS Award, nor is it an endorsement.

This post contains buy links which earn the CYBILS Awards advertising fees through Bookshop.org and Amazon Associates.

Book covers link to Goodreads. Blurbs extracted from Goodreads.

Being Home

Today is a day of excitement—it’s time to move! As a young Cherokee girl says goodbye to the swing, the house, and the city she's called home her whole life, she readies herself for an upcoming road trip. While her mother drives, she draws in her sketchbook the changing landscape outside her window. She looks forward to the end of their journey, where she'll eat the feast her extended family prepared, play in the creek with her cousins, and settle into the new rhythm of home.
Fiction Picture Book nominee, 2024

Buffalo Dreamer

Summer and her family always spend relaxed summers in Alberta, Canada, on the reservation where her mom’s family lives. But this year is turning out to be an eye-opening one. She learns that unmarked children’s graves have been discovered at the school her grandpa attended as a child. Now more folks are speaking up about their harrowing experiences at these places, including her grandfather. Summer cherishes her heritage and is heartbroken about all her grandfather was forced to give up and miss out on.
Middle Grade Fiction nominee, 2024

Coming Home: A Hopi Resistance Story

From master Hopi woodcarver Mavasta Honyouti, the story of his grandfather’s experience at a residential boarding school and how he returned home to pass their traditions down to future generations.
Elementary Nonfiction nominee, 2024

A Constellation of Minor Bears

Before that awful Saturday, Molly used to be inseparable from her brother, Hank, and his best friend, Tray. The indoor climbing accident that left Hank with a traumatic brain injury filled Molly with anger. Determined to go on the trio’s post-graduation hike of the Pacific Crest Trail, even without Hank, Molly packs her bag. But when her parents put Tray in charge of looking out for her, she is stuck backpacking with the person who incites her easy anger. Despite all her planning, the trail she’ll walk has a few more twists and turns ahead.
Young Adult Fiction submission, 2024

Daughter of the Light-Footed People: The Story of Indigenous Marathon Champion Lorena Ramírez

Experience a sixty-mile run with Indigenous athlete Lorena Ramírez. She runs in the traditional clothes of the Rarámuri, “the light-footed people,” to show that her people and their way of life are alive and thriving—outpacing runners in modern, high-tech gear and capturing the world’s attention. Lorena’s career as an athlete is an inspiring real-life example of the power of perseverance that will encourage young readers to follow their own dreams.
Elementary Nonfiction nominee, 2024

The Flicker

A pair of step-siblings band together with a theater troupe to brave the Appalachian wilderness after a climate apocalypse, avoiding capture by the Hive—an army of mega-rich survivors—while searching for their grandmother, a Native elder who may still be alive.
Elementary/Middle-Grade Speculative Fiction nominee, 2024

I Am A Rock

Pauloosie loves his pet rock, Miki Rock. Pauloosie’s Anaana, his mother, tells him a bedtime story about what Miki Rock sees, hears, and feels in his Arctic home. As part of the land, Miki Rock sees char and beluga, listens to chirps and howls, and feels the snow and sun.
Fiction Picture Book submission, 2024

Indiginerds

First Nations culture is living, vibrant, and evolving, and generations of Indigenous kids have grown up with pop culture creeping inexorably into our lives. From gaming to social media, pirate radio to garage bands, Star Trek to D&D, and missed connections at the pow wow, Indigenous culture is so much more than how it’s usually portrayed. INDIGNERDS is here to celebrate those stories! Featuring an all-Indigenous creative team, INDIGNERDS is an exhilarating anthology collecting 11 stories about Indigenous people balancing traditional ways of knowing with modern pop culture.
YA Graphic Novel nominee, 2024

Kaiah’s Garden

Kaiah longs to be with her grandmother again. Kaiah’s life doesn’t feel right without her. But through her treasured bead box ― and the beauty it holds ― she is with her grandmother, in a garden that is full of color and love. Featuring bright, breathtaking illustrations from Tsilhqot’in and Syilx artist Karlene Harvey, the book also features back matter about the Indigenous tradition of beading.
Fiction Picture Book submission, 2024

Kindred Spirits: Shilombish Ittibachvffa

A nonfiction picture book about the inspiring true pay-it-forward story that bridges two continents, 175 years, and two events in history--connecting Ireland, Choctaw Nation, Navajo Nation, and the Hopi Tribe.
Elementary Nonfiction nominee, 2024

Let’s Go!

very day, a little boy watches kids pass by on skateboards, and dreams of joining them. One day, his mother brings a her old skateboard, just for him! haw êkwa! Let’s go! Together, they practice on the sidewalk, at the park, in Auntie’s yard—everywhere. But when it comes time to try the skatepark, the skateboarders crash down like a waterfall. Can he find the confidence to join them?
Fiction Picture Book submission, 2024

Looking for Smoke

When local girl Loren includes Mara in a traditional Blackfeet Giveaway to honor Loren’s missing sister, Mara thinks she’ll finally make some friends on the Blackfeet reservation. Instead, a girl from the Giveaway, Samantha White Tail, is found murdered. Because the four members of the Giveaway group were the last to see Samantha alive, each becomes a person of interest in the investigation. Despite deep mistrust, the four must now take matters into their own hands and clear their names.
Young Adult Fiction nominee, 2024

Sheine Lende (Elatsoe, #0)

Shane works with her mother and their ghost dogs, tracking down missing persons even when their families can't afford to pay. Their own family was displaced from their traditional home years ago following a devastating flood - and the loss of Shane's father and her grandparents. They don't think they'll ever get their home back. hane, her brother, her friends, and her lone, surviving grandparent - who isn't to be trusted - set off on the road to find them. But they may not be anywhere in this world - or this place in time. Nevertheless, Shane is going to find them.
YA Speculative Fiction nominee, 2024

Stealing Little Moon: The Legacy of the American Indian Boarding Schools

Part American history, part family history, Stealing Little Moon is a powerful look at the miseducation and the mistreatment of Indigenous kids, while celebrating their strength, resiliency, and courage--and the ultimate failure of the United States government to erase them.
High School Nonfiction nominee, 2024

This Land

Before my family lived in this house, a different family did, and before them, another family, and another before them. And before that, the family who lived here lived not in a house, but a wigwam. Who lived where you are before you got there? This Land teaches readers that the lands we occupy were once the homeland of Indigenous people, some of whom still live there today.
Fiction Picture Book submission, 2024

The Vice Principal Problem (The Blue Stars #1)

When cousins Riley Halfmoon and Maya Dawn move to Urbanopolis to live with their activist grandma, they get off to a rocky start. Outgoing Riley misses her Muscogee cousins but is sure that she and Maya will be instant BFFs. Meanwhile, introvert Maya misses her parents, on active duty in Japan, and just wants some space to herself. At school, Maya joins Robotics Club and Riley bonds with fellow gymnasts. Just when they start to feel at home, their school culture is threatened by an influential foe in disguise.
Elementary/Middle-Grade Graphic Novel nominee, 2024

Where Wolves Don’t Die

Ezra Cloud hates living in Northeast Minneapolis. His father is a professor of their language, Ojibwe, at a local college, so they have to be there. But Ezra hates the dirty, polluted snow around them. He hates being away from the rez at Nigigoonsiminikaaning First Nation. And he hates local bully Matt Schroeder. The same night Ezra gets into a terrible fight with Matt at school, Matt's house burns down. Instantly, Ezra becomes a prime suspect. Knowing he won't get a fair deal, and knowing his innocence, Ezra is sent away to run traplines with his grandfather in Canada. But the Schroeders are looking for him.
Young Adult Fiction nominee, 2024

Find this list at Bookshop.org