2022 Bluestem Nominees

A biography of a Czech girl who died in the Holocaust, told in alternating chapters with an account of how the curator of a Japanese Holocaust center learned about her life after Hana's suitcase was sent to her.

Twelve-year-old Ellie, who has cerebral palsy, finds her life transformed when she moves with her mother to small-town Oklahoma to help care for her grandfather, who has Alzheimer's Disease.

With a gift for fine art and a lifelong love of nature, Daniele paints magnificent animal subjects on an unconventional canvas--human hands. This awe-inspiring collection showcases 16 creatures along with photos and factual information about the various species. Full color.

Ten-year-old Liam and his two younger sisters, precocious third-grader Dakota and second-grader Izzy, who has Down syndrome, face the possibility of losing their beloved dog, Cupcake, who keeps urinating on their apartment's carpet.

""You're so exotic!!" "You look so unusual." "But what are you really?" Eleven-year-old Isabella - whose father is black and mother is white - is used to these kinds of comments, but it doesn't mean she likes them. And now that her parents are divorced (and getting along WORSE than ever), Isabella feels like a push-me-pull-me toy. Being split between Mom and Dad is more than switching houses, switching nicknames, switching backpacks: It's switching...

"Sometimes life isn't a piece of cake ... When Jingwen moves to a new country, he feels like he's landed on Mars. School is torture, making friends is impossible since he doesn't speak English, and he's often stuck looking after his (extremely irritating) little brother, Yanghao. To distract himself from the loneliness, Jingwen daydreams about making all the cakes on the menu of Pie in the Sky, the bakery his father had planned to open before he unexpectedly...