Release of the 2026 NCSS Notable Social Studies Trade Books Award List

As I mentioned above, I'm going to change up the order of posts for a short-notice one - don't worry, I'll get the others I've been working on up over the rest of the week (and then expect to start seeing from posts from my trip to the National Association of Economic Educators conference in Kansas City over the next week or so). But this is a favorite of mine - and this year I'm finding out about it a LOT earlier!

As part of creating this website and emphasizing resources for teachers, I have found myself signing up for a lot of mailing lists, even if they seem to be unrelated to social studies, simply to make connections or get information about releases of materials that might be helpful. One I should have done long ago was the Children's Book Council - as a teacher in a K-8 school, I was always passing on ideas for reading selections to the elementary teachers I worked with OR using a few of them myself. And of course, some of my favorite economics lessons have come from people like Mary Suiter (retired from the St. Louis Fed) and Lynn Stover/Lauren Shifflett (from the Virginia Council for Econ Ed) on using children's literature to integrate money or ECON lessons into K-5 classrooms.

But at the time 25-30 years ago, there were no websites easily available to access information on new releases of children's books - you were dependent on magazines at the library, or features in a catalog telling you about the latest stories (particularly non-fiction, which rarely gets featured in the kids' sections of public libraries except to feature a topic (like Black History Month in Feb) OR the yearly printing of the NCSS list at the end of the school year. I knew about the NCSS trade books annual list - I tried multiple times over the years of my teaching career to apply for the committee and never got selected - but it was still a once-a-year resource.

Anyway, the release schedule for NCSS's Notable Social Studies Trade Books awards has definitely improved over the past few years. First, I think NCSS is working more closely with the Children's Book Council on creating and publicizing the list - so it gets a wider distribution beyond NCSS members. Second, social media tools like X and Facebook made it easier for people outside the publishing industry to see the press releases of award announcements (that's what I saw yesterday - an e-mail from CBC with links to the list and the press release on X). Finally, rather than having to wait for the annual insert in the May/June issue of Social Education, the internet makes it possible to access the list in multiple forms AS LONG AS YOU KNOW ABOUT IT. That is still the trick - knowing it is available - which is one of the reasons I wanted to push this post to the top of the queue.

A couple of things to note here. One, this is primarily a resource for K-5 or so - there are a few books listed for middle school and high school, but relatively few compared to the elementary list. Second goes with that - my bias is that the elementary ones are usually the more accessible selections anyway - short readings, lots of pictures, good content, and relatively easy to integrate into another subject. Finally, be aware of NCSS's philosophy that goes into their selections (and to be fair, that philosophy has been revised multiple times over the years). Here is a quote from both the CBC and NCSS websites on the current standard:

Links to the NCSS Notable Trade Books in Social Studies materials:

Main page on NCSS website for Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People - https://www.socialstudies.org/notable-trade-books

Main page on the Children's Book Council website for the same material - https://cbcbooks.org/awards-and-book-lists/notable-social-studies/

Announcement of the awards on X - https://x.com/NCSSNetwork/status/2028868985882656824

Annotated list of award winners with book covers and links to publisher/author websites - https://cbcbooks.org/cbc-book-lists/nsstb-2026/

Downloadable and sortable spreadsheet of the same information (without the book covers) - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YvnrujZrk_vSLohrBsrWsmxhtLd-sC9q2WhQIsThg8w/edit?gid=0#gid=0

Links to some of the books featured above:

Darcy Pattison's author page - https://www.darcypattison.com/ and specific book page - https://mimshousebooks.com/collections/award-winning/products/climate

Shifa Saltagi Safadi's author page - https://shifasafadi.com/ , specific book page - https://shifasafadi.com/the-gift-of-eid/ and educator resource guide - https://shifasafadi.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/giftofeideducator.pdf

Leila Boukarim's author page - https://www.leilaboukarim.com/ and specific book page - https://www.chroniclebooks.com/products/mariama-s-dream

Carmen Agra Deedy's author page - https://carmenagradeedy.com/ and specific book page - https://carmenagradeedy.com/book/the-peanut-man/

Laurie Halse Anderson's author page - https://madwomanintheforest.com/ and specific book page - https://madwomanintheforest.com/book/rebellion-1776/

Liz Zunon's author page - https://lizzunon.com/ and specific book page - https://lizzunon.com/ThroughSandAndSalt.html

"The Notable Social Studies Trade Book Awards are an annual project of NCSS and the Children’s Book Council (CBC) running since 1972. This award list features K-12 annotated titles published in the previous calendar year that are exceptional books for use in social studies classrooms, selected by social studies educators.

Books selected for this bibliography are written primarily for children in grades K-12. The selection committee looks for books that emphasize human relations, represent a diversity of groups and are sensitive to a broad range of cultural experiences, present an original theme or a fresh slant on a traditional topic, are easily readable and of high literary quality, and have a pleasing format and, when appropriate, illustrations that enrich the text. Each book is read by several reviewers, and books are included on the list by committee assent"

The entire list is several pages long, so I am not going to include the whole thing here. Instead, I'm going to provide links for the list in several formats (PDF text, an annotated list with book covers pictured, and a sortable spreadsheet of selections) below in my resource list. Instead, I'm going to feature below a few selections which either I have read or which sound like they have definite ways to integrate them into classrooms beyond K-5. I will also link the searchable database on NCSS for previous award winners since 2000. Oh, and as a bit of a preview - one more book that was honored on the award list will be featured in tomorrow's post . . .

Darcy Pattison writes a lot of science and STEM stories, but many of them connect well to social studies topics. She did one on an engineer in the American Revolution I'll be featuring soon. This book could connect well to geography - it just won a major STEM/science award.

Shifa was just a finalist for the National Book Award for one of her middle school fiction books. This one is a good fit for Muslim holidays (always hard to find) but also for economics (choice and opportunity cost). Also has an educator guide on her website!

Leila Boukarim focuses her stories on the overlooked - particularly refugees and people meeting challenges with action. This particular book also works well with entrepreneurship and the extra challenges that come with starting a business as a refugee.

Carmen Agra Deedy writes on a variety of topics and hosts the popular children's program, "Love That Book!" This particular book focuses on a child immigrant from Cuba, but also cultural connections that come from buying and selling of goods (like peanuts, in this case).

I have to include this one not only as a representative secondary choice, but also because Laurie Halse Anderson has done so many great middle school history novels over the years. This one follows a girl through both the American Revolution time period but her experiences with the smallpox epidemics in Philadelphia.

Elizabeth Zunon hits two great topics for me with this book - my 6th graders always studied Ancient Africa and the stories of West African empires, while older students could connect with the gold-for-salt trade stories and the logistics challenges of trade routes.