The American Library Association announced the 2024 Youth Media Award winners Monday. A few Indigenous authors made the list.
“Rez Ball” by Byron Graves is the 2024 Morris Award winner for a debut book published by a first-time author writing for teens, and a Young Adult Book winner from the American Indian Youth Literature Awards.
Graves, Ojibwe, said he is in complete disbelief that he won. He read some of the other books that were nominated and didn’t think “Rez Ball” was going to take the prize.
“It kind of felt surreal, like a dream. I just didn’t expect my writing or my book to be the winner. First of all, I didn’t expect to be nominated,” he said.
“Rez Ball” is about an Ojibwe teen named Tre Brun who plays on the Red Lake Reservation high school team and dreams of playing in the NBA. He is dealing with his older brother’s death, who was also a basketball player, and hopes to represent his team to their first state championship.
Graves said there’s something special about Native authors who write Native stories. They can write about family, friends, specific situations, events, dialogue, dialect or slang that someone from the outside can’t. It’s only within the last couple decades that a Native audience has been represented.
“Historically, a kid couldn’t pick up a book that was from a rez and then feel like ‘hey that’s me,’ or ‘I can identify with that character.’ I think that does a lot of things for Native youth, a lot of positive things,” he said.
It also puts Indigenous people into a contemporary perspective rather than just as fables, a mascot or fiction.
Graves has been writing for about a decade and said he tried for so long to figure out what kind of books he wanted to write and find his voice as an author. He then remembered the classic advice in creative writing classes — write what you know.
He said he knew what it was like to be a teenager from Red Lake in Minnesota, being a basketball player in high school where the sport is everything, the pressures and fun of being a basketball player and having pride in his community.
“Once I started telling that story, the story kind of told itself. I just had to get out of the way,” Graves said.
The book is published by Heartdrum, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, and Graves credits them for helping him craft the book.
Graves hopes what the Indigenous youth will take from his book is that you can be anything you set your mind to and you’re not defined by one aspect of your life.
“You can still be friends with your pals who play video games and you can also be friends with the jocks on the basketball team and you can fall in love with the girl who is none of those things,” he said. “You can balance all that. You don’t have to be one thing, you can be multiple things. ‘Rez Ball’ kind of shows the layers of a teenager and how many different hats you can wear.”
Other Indigenous authors that were recognized include:
Ari Tison’s “Saints of the Household” won the 2024 Pura Belpré Young Adult Author Award. It is the Indigenous Costa Rican-American’s debut novel. The story centers on two Bribri, Indigenous people in eastern Costa Rica and northern Panama, American brothers who deal with the consequences of a fight they intervened in and their abusive father.
It was also a finalist for the William C. Morris Award.
“Eagle Drums,” written and illustrated by Nasuġraq Rainey Hopson, Inupiaq, won the Newbery Honor Books and the American Indian Youth Literature Awards’ Middle Grade Honor Books. The story is part folklore and origin myth of the Iñupiaq Messenger Feast, a Native Alaskan tradition.
“It’s the story of how Iñupiaq people were given the gift of music, song, dance, community, and everlasting tradition,” MacMillan publisher wrote.
“Bad Cree” by Jessica Johns, nehiyaw/Sucker Creek First Nation, won the 2024 Alex Award. The Alex Awards is for the 10 best adult books that appeal to teen audiences.
“I am so honored to win the Alex Award for adult books that appeal to teen audiences! ‘Bad Cree’ is a novel that centers generational family members, so it’s wonderful that the book can be enjoyed generationally as well,” Johns said in an email.
