On a day celebrating the best of children's literature, All the Blues in the Sky by Renée Watson won the 2026 Newbery Medal, and Fireworks, illustrated by Cátia Chien and written by Matthew Burgess, was named the Caldecott Medal winner. The winners of the prestigious and oldest awards in kid lit were announced during the ALA Youth Media Awards ceremony from Chicago on Monday. In all, 22 awards were presented.

For Watson, the win was particularly emotional. She received the call from the Newbery committee on Sunday night. As she thanked the cheering group, she looked at a bookshelf in her home that displayed pictures of people close to her whom she has lost in the last few years, including her mother and author Nikki Giovanni.

“Looking at their faces and knowing that I just won this award for a book about grief and loss and joy, it just was overwhelming,” Watson told SLJ. “So I started to cry. Then [the committee was] crying. We just all had a moment of, ‘Wow, this is really happening.’ It was really special.”

Said Newbery committee chair Ramona Caponegro, “Watson’s tender exploration of the struggle to express grief’s many, sometimes contradictory facets stood out to the committee. Her work is a stunning depiction of an experience that all readers have had or will have, probably multiple times in their lives, and resounds with the themes that losses cannot be weighed and compared and that grief and love are ongoing.”

The Caldecott winner, in contrast to All the Blues in the Sky, shares the story of an average day for a couple of children waiting to watch some fireworks.

“Fireworks is distinguished by the way it captures the rhythm of a summer day,” Caldecott committee chair Jewel Davis said.  “It is a rare book that trusts the quiet, lived-in moments of childhood to be just as spectacular as the main event.”

Watson previously earned a Newbery Honor for Piecing Me Together in 2018. This year, there were four Newbery Honor titles: The Nine Moons of Han Yu and Luli by Karina Yan Glaser; A Sea of Lemon Trees: The Corrido of Roberto Alvarez by María Dolores Águila; The Teacher of Nomad Land: A World War II Story by Daniel Nayeri; and The Undead Fox of Deadwood Forest by Aubrey Hartman.

“Our honor books have amazing, vastly different storylines and settings, but they all speak to the importance of connection in some way, be it through communication, art, shared struggle, or shared adventure,” said Caponegro.

There were also four Caldecott Honor titles: Every Monday Mabel by Jashar Awan; Our Lake by Angie Kang; Stalactite & Stalagmite: A Big Tale from a Little Cave by Drew Beckmeyer; and Sundust by Zeke Peña.

“Across the medal and honor books, a quiet throughline of belonging emerged,” said Davis. “The illustrations in each title approach this idea differently, through mood, setting, texture, and visual structure, but together they reflect a year of picture books that are both joyful and meaningful. These titles affirm children’s emotional lives and their connections to the world around them in ways that feel grounded, expansive, and deeply respectful of young readers.”

Legendary Frybread Drive-In: Intertribal Stories, edited by Cynthia Leitich Smith, won the Michael L. Printz Award for young adult literature. It was the second anthology to win the award. The Collectors: Stories, edited by A.S. King, won the award in 2024.

The collection of Indigenous stories from Smith and more than 15 writers also won the American Indian Youth Literature Award for Best Young Adult Book and earned an Odyssey Honor for the audiobook. 

The Printz Honor titles were: Cope Field by T.L. Simpson; The House That No One Sees by Adina King; Sisters in the Wind by Angeline Boulley; and Song of a Blackbird by Maria van Lieshout.

"We loved each of our Honor books for very different reasons," Printz committee chair Jodeana Kruse told SLJ. "Angeline Boulley continues to create works that highlight injustices in Indigenous history that teens really should know about, and she wraps that information in stories of hope. T. L. Simpson knocked it out of the park with Cope Field. His examination of masculinity and healthy relationships is top-notch, both in this title and in his first book. We appreciated that there were no easy answers offered in Cope Field, which enhanced its authenticity—and one of our committee members highly recommends the playlist created by each of the chapter titles. Maria van Lieshout's integration of photographs from the Resistance was brilliant, and the dual timelines packed a huge emotional punch. Finally, Adina King's The House That No One Sees was incredibly haunting. We found ourselves pondering the symbolism and motifs she used to create layers of meaning and appreciated that—like some of our other Honor books and our winner—intergenerational relationships were honored."

It was a big day for Candace Fleming, who won two lifetime achievement awards: the Margaret A. Edwards Award and the Children's Literature Legacy Award. In addition, her 2025 title Death in the Jungle: Murder, Betrayal, and the Lost Dream of Jonestown won YALSA’s Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults. 

For the full list of winners and honors titles, see the press release below.