It’s either emblematic of the COVID-19 pandemic or the most over-used word of 2020. Either way, we couldn’t resist using it for this week’s Backlist Book List! We promise it is more riveting than pivoting.
Laurie Halse Anderson’s award-winning book Fever 1793 was published in 2000, six years before the Cybils Awards launched. It is a historical fiction novel about Mattie Cook, a 14-year-old girl living in Philadelphia during the Yellow Fever epidemic.
Becky Herzog’s GoodReads review explains better than we can why Fever 1793 was such an apropos read for 2020:
No matter the decade or century an epidemic would be scary, terrifying even. But at a time when doctors were absolutely clueless yet confident that they knew what they were doing, it’s extremely terrifying. ~Becky’s Reviews
With Laurie Halse Anderson’s book as our foundation, we found some Cybils-nominated “read alikes.” Like our Voices for Social Change book list, this collection skews heavily – but not exclusively! – toward nonfiction.
The best part?
Adult readers will be just as fascinated by these books as the intended audience.
 Between Shades of Gray2011 Finalist
Young Adult Fiction
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Blood and Germs:
The Civil War Battle Against Wounds and Disease (Medical Fiascoes)
2020 Nominee
Middle Grade Nonfiction
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 Breakthrough!: How Three People Saved “Blue Babies” and Changed Medicine Forever2016 Nominee
Middle Grade Nonfiction
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 Bubonic Panic: When Plague Invaded America
2016 Finalist
Middle Grade Nonfiction
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 The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Rivalry, Adventure, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements (Young Readers Edition)2018 Finalist
Middle Grade Nonfiction
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 A Fever, a Flight, and a Fight for the World The Rwendigo Tales,Book Four
2018 Nominee
Young Adult Speculative Fiction
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 How They Croaked: The Awful Ends of the Awfully Famous
2011 Finalist
Middle Grade Nonfiction
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 I Feel Better with a Frog in My Throat: History’s Strangest Cures
2011 Winner
Elementary/Middle Grade Nonfiction
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 A Plague of Bogles How to Catch a Bogle, Book 2
2015 Nominee
Elementary/Middle Grade Speculative Fiction
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 Poison: Deadly Deeds, Perilous Professions, and Murderous Medicines2017 Finalist
Middle Grade Nonfiction
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 The Secret of the Yellow Death: A True Story of Medical Sleuthing
by Suzanne Jurmain
2010 Winner
Young Adult Nonfiction
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 Very, Very, Very Dreadful: The Influenza Pandemic of 1918
2018 Nominee
Young Adult Nonfiction
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 Wily and the Canine Pandemic2017 Nominee
Elementary/Middle Grade Speculative Fiction
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