2016 Winner

With great pleasure, the 2016 Children’s Book Guild Nonfiction Award Committee announced the selection of noted and prolific author Tonya Bolden as the award's 2016 recipient. The Children's Book Guild Nonfiction Award is presented annually to an author for a body of work that has “contributed significantly to the quality of nonfiction for children.”

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The 2016 award celebration honoring Bolden took place on Saturday, April 9, 2016, at Clyde’s Restaurant of Gallery Place, 707 7th Street NW, Washington D.C. The event included lunch and a presentation by the author followed by a book sale and signing.  

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Bolden has created works of nonfiction that appeal to children and young adults, both in her topics and her accessible writing style. Ms. Bolden has written twenty-seven books, many of which represent the African-American experience. Her topics include the Emancipation Proclamation, Muhammad Ali, W.E.B. DuBois, as well as little known African-Americans of note, as in Searching for Sarah Rector and Maritcha: A Nineteenth-Century American Girl. “What serendipity that her latest book is set in our own backyard” said committee chair Joan Kindig about Capital Days: Michael Shiner’s Journal and the Growth of Our Nation’s Capital. “It was meant to be!”

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Committee members included Guild members Joan Kindig, professor, James Madison University (chair); Katy Kelly, author; Jewell Stoddard, children’s literature specialist; and Kathie Meizner, librarian, Montgomery County Public Libraries (chair emeritus).