The Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature is presented annually to a book that exemplifies literary excellence in young adult literature. It is named in memory of a Topeka, Kansas school librarian who was a long-time active member of the Young Adult Library Services Association of the American Library Association.

2024 Winner

The Collectors : Stories by A.S. King

From David Levithan's story about a non-binary kid collecting pieces of other people's collections to Jenny Torres Sanchez's tale of a girl gathering types of fire while trying not to get burned to G. Neri's piece about 1970s skaters seeking opportunities to go vertical--anything can be collected and in the hands of these award-winning and best-selling authors, any collection can tell a story.

Honor Books

• The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be : A Speculative Memoir of Transracial Adoption by  Shannon Gibney

2023 Winner

All My Rage by Sabaa Tahir

A family extending from Pakistan to California deals with generations of young love, old regrets, and forgiveness.

Honor Books

• Icebreaker by  A. L Graziadei

• Queer Ducks (And Other Animals) : The Natural World of Animal Sexuality by Eliot Schrefer

• Scout's Honor by  Lily Anderson

• When the Angels Left the Old Country by  Sacha Lamb

2022 Winner

Firekeeper's Daughter by  Angeline Boulley

Daunis, who is part Ojibwe, defers attending the University of Michigan to care for her mother and reluctantly becomes involved in the investigation of a series of drug-related deaths.

Honor Books

• Concrete Rose by  Angie Thomas

• Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo

• Revolution in Our Time : The Black Panther Party's Promise to the People by Kekla Magoon

• Starfish by  Lisa Fipps

2021 Winner

Everything Sad Is Untrue (A True Story) by  Daniel Nayeri

At the front of a middle school classroom in Oklahoma, a boy named Khosrou (whom everyone calls Daniel) stands, trying to tell a story. His story. But no one believes a word he says. To them he is a dark-skinned, hairy-armed boy with a big butt whose lunch smells funny; who makes things up and talks about poop too much. But Khosrou's stories, stretching back years, and decades, and centuries, are beautiful, and terrifying, from the moment his family fled Iran in the middle of the night with the secret police moments behind them, back to the sad, cement refugee camps of Italy and further back to the fields near the river Aras, where rain-soaked flowers bled red like the yolk of sunset burst over everything, and further back still to the Jasmine-scented city of Isfahan. We bounce between a school bus of kids armed with paper clip missiles and spitballs to the heroines and heroes of Khosrou's family's past, who ate pastries that made people weep and cry "Akh, Tamar!" and touched carpets woven with precious gems. Like Scheherazade in a hostile classroom, Daniel weaves a tale to save his own life: to stake his claim to the truth. And it is (a true story).

Honor Books

• Apple : Skin to the Core by  Eric L Gansworth

• Dragon Hoops by Gene Luen Yang

• Every Body Looking by  Candice Iloh

• We Are Not Free by  Traci Chee

2020 Winner

Dig by  A. S. (Amy Sarig) King

Five white teenage cousins who are struggling with the failures and racial ignorance of their dysfunctional parents and their wealthy grandparents, reunite for Easter.

Honor Books

• Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me by Mariko Tamaki

• Ordinary Hazards : A Memoir by Nikki Grimes

• The Beast Player by  Nahoko Uehashi

• Where the World Ends by Geraldine McCaughrean

2019 Winner

The Poet X by  Elizabeth Acevedo

Xiomara Batista feels unheard and unable to hide in her Harlem neighborhood. Ever since her body grew into curves, she has learned to let her fists and her fierceness do the talking.

Honor Books

• A Heart in a Body in the World by  Deb Caletti

• Damsel by  Elana K Arnold

• I, Claudia by  Mary McCoy

2018 Winner

We Are Okay : A Novel by  Nina LaCour

After leaving her life behind to go to college in New York, Marin must face the truth about the tragedy that happened in the final weeks of summer when her friend Mabel comes to visit.

Honor Books

• Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds

• Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor

• The Hate U Give by  Angie Thomas

• Vincent and Theo : The Van Gogh Brothers by Deborah Heiligman

2017 Winner

March: Book Three by John and Andrew Aydin Lewis Illustrated by Nate Powell

Congressman Lewis concludes his firsthand account of the civil rights era, spotlighting pivotal moments (the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, AL; the Freedom Summer murders; the 1964 Democratic National Convention; and the Selma to Montgomery marches).

Honor Books

• Asking For It by Louise O'Neill

• Scythe by Neal Shusterman

• The Passion of Dolssa by Julie Barry

• The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon

2016 Winner

Bone Gap by Laura Ruby

Eighteen-year-old Finn, an outsider in his quiet Midwestern town, is the only witness to the abduction of town favorite Roza, but his inability to distinguish between faces makes it difficult for him to help with the investigation, and subjects him to even more ridicule and bullying.

Honor Books

• Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Perez

• The Ghosts of Heaven by Marcus Sedgwick

2015 Winner

I'll Give You The Sun by Jandy Nelson

A story of first love, family, loss, and betrayal told from different points in time, and in separate voices, by artists Jude and her twin brother Noah.

Honor Books

• And We Stay by Jenny Hubbard

• Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith

• The Carnival at Bray by Jessie Ann Foley

• This One Summer by Mariko Tamaki Illustrated by  Jillian Tamaki

2014 Winner

Midwinter Blood by Marcus Sedgwick

Seven linked vignettes unfold on a Scandinavian island inhabited--throughout various time periods--by Vikings, vampires, ghosts, and a curiously powerful plant.

Honor Books

• Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

• Kingdom of Little Wounds by Susann Cokal

• Maggot Moon by Sally Gardner Illustrated by  Julian Crouch

• Navigating Early by Clare Vanderpool

2013 Winner

In Darkness by Nick Lake

In the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake, fifteen-year-old Shorty, a poor gang member from the slums of Site Soleil, is trapped in the rubble of a ruined hospital, and as he grows weaker he has visions and memories of his life of violence, his lost twin sister, and of Toussaint L'Ouverture, who liberated Haiti from French rule in the 1804.

Honor Books

• Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Saenz

• Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein

• Dodger by Terry Pratchett

• The White Bicycle by Brenna Beverley

2012 Winner

Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley

Seventeen-year-old Cullen's summer in Lily, Arkansas, is marked by his cousin's death by overdose, an alleged spotting of a woodpecker thought to be extinct, failed romances, and his younger brother's sudden disappearance.

Honor Books

• Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey

• The Returning by Christine Hinwood

• The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater

• Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler Illustrated by  Maira Kalman

2011 Winner

Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi

In a futuristic world, teenaged Nailer scavenges copper wiring from grounded oil tankers for a living, but when he finds a beached clipper ship with a girl in the wreckage, he has to decide if he should strip the ship for its wealth or rescue the girl.

Honor Books

• Nothing by Janne Teller

• Please Ignore Vera Dietz by A.S. King

• Revolver by Marcus Sedgwick

• Stolen by Lucy Christopher

2010 Winner

Going Bovine by Libba Bray

Cameron Smith, a disaffected sixteen year-old who, after being diagnosed with Creutzfeld Jakob's (aka mad cow) disease, sets off on a road trip with a death-obsessed video gaming dwarf he meets in the hospital in an attempt to find a cure.

Honor Books

• Charles and Emma: The Darwins' Leap of Faith by Deborah Heiligman

• Punkzilla by Adam Rapp

• Tales from the Madman Underground: An Historical Romance, 1973 by John Barnes

• The Monstrumologist by Rick Yancey

2009 Winner

Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta

Abandoned by her drug-addicted mother at the age of eleven, high school student Taylor Markham struggles with her identity and family history at a boarding school in Australia.

Honor Books

• Nation by Terry Pratchett

• Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan

• The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart

• The Kingdom on the Waves by M. T. Anderson

2008 Winner

The White Darkness by Geraldine McCaughrean

Taken to Antarctica by the man she thinks of as her uncle for what she believes to be a vacation, Symone--a troubled fourteen year old--discovers that he is dangerously obsessed with seeking Symme's Hole, an opening that supposedly leads into the center of a hollow Earth.

Honor Books

• Dreamquake by Elizabeth Knox

• One Whole and Perfect Day by Judith Clarke

• Repossessed by A.M. Jenkins

• Your Own, Sylvia: A Verse Portrait of Sylvia Plath by  Hemphill. Stephanie

2007 Winner

American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang

Alternates three interrelated stories about the problems of young Chinese Americans trying to participate in the popular culture. Presented in comic book format. Lexile 530

Honor Books

• An Abundance of Katherines by John Green

• Surrender by Sonya Hartnett

• The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

• The Pox Party by M. T. Anderson

2006 Winner

Looking for Alaska by John Green

Sixteen-year-old Miles' first year at Culver Creek Preparatory School in Alabama includes good friends and great pranks, but is defined by the search for answers about life and death after a fatal car crash.

Honor Books

• A Wreath for Emmett Till by Marilyn Nelson

• Black Juice by Margo Lanagan

• I Am the Messenger by Markus Zusak

• John Lennon: All I Want is the Truth by Elizabeth Partridge

2005 Winner

How I live Now by Meg Rosoff

To get away from her pregnant stepmother in New York City, fifteen-year-old Daisy goes to England to stay with her aunt and cousins, with whom she instantly bonds, but soon war breaks out and rips apart the family while devastating the land.

Honor Books

• Airborn by Kenneth Oppel

• Chanda's Secrets by Allan Stratton

• Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy by Gary D. Schmidt

2004 Winner

The First Part Last by Angela Johnson

Bobby's carefree teenage life changes forever when he becomes a father and must care for his adored baby daughter.

Honor Books

• A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly

• Fat Kid Rules the World by K.L. Going

• Keesha's House by Helen Frost

• The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things by Carolyn Mackler

2003 Winner

Postcards from No Man's Land by Aidan Chambers

Alternates between two stories--comtemporarily, seventeen-year-old Jacob visits a daunting Amsterdam at the request of his English grandmother--and historically, nineteen-year-old Geertrui relates her experience of British soldiers's attempts to liberate Holland from its German occupation.

Honor Books

• Hole in My Life by Jack Gantos

• My Heartbeat by Garret Freymann-Weyr

• The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer

2002 Winner

A Step from Heaven by An Na

A young Korean girl and her family find it difficult to learn English and adjust to life in America.

Honor Books

• Freewill by Chris Lynch

• Heart to Heart: New Poems Inspired by Twentieth Century American Art by Jan Greenberg

• The Ropemaker by Peter Dickinson

• True Believer by Virginia Euwer Wolff

2001 Winner

Kit's Wilderness by David Almond

Thirteen-year-old Kit goes to live with his grandfather in the decaying coal mining town of Stoneygate, England, and finds both the old man and the town haunted by ghosts of the past.

Honor Books

• Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison

• Many Stones by Carolyn Coman

• Stuck in Neutral by Terry Trueman

• The Body of Christopher Creed by Carol Plum-Ucci

2000 Winner

Monster by Walter Dean Myers

While on trial as an accomplice to a murder, sixteen-year-old Steve Harmon records his experiences in prison and in the courtroom in the form of a film script as he tries to come to terms with the course his life has taken.

Honor Books

• Hard Love by Ellen Wittlinger

• Skellig by David Almond

• Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson