the Jewish
Book Council 2026
Children’s Picture Books:
Winner: The Remembering Candle
Jews remember someone who passed away by lighting a traditional yahrzeit candle on the anniversary of a death. The Remembering Candle shares this custom and others to keep departed loved ones close. This book fills a much-needed niche, as young readers may be unfamiliar with these traditions, and some caregivers may find it awkward to explain something painful to youngsters. The beautiful mixed media illustrations bring love, heart, and depth to the story.
Finalists:
Fanny’s Big Idea: How Jewish Book Week Was Born
On the Wings of Eagles
Middle Grade Literature:
Winner: Honoria : A Fortuitous Friendship
Ida visits the Murphys, friends of her father, and the famous Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald. She travels to France and unknowingly into the artistic epicenter of 1929. She meets their haughty, sullen, precocious daughter, Honoria. Ida wonders if she can be friends with the prettiest girl in the world. The children bond as they perceive the unhappiness bubbling beneath the surface gaiety of the grown- ups. Cartoonist Janice Shapiro’s debut graphic novel is the complex story of two young girls still unclouded by pretenses of age moving slowly into womanhood. The book is achingly sad and effortlessly funny.
Finalists:
Scattergood
Max in the Land of Lies
Right Back At You
Young Adult Literature:
Winner: I Wish I Didn’t Have to Tell You This: A Graphic
Memoir
In his latest graphic memoir, Eugene Yelchin continues looking back at his earlier life in the former Soviet Union. This book tells a harrowing story. It begins when Yevgeny, his character in earlier memoirs, is now a painter and theater designer who still lives with his mother and grandmother in a tiny apartment; his father died. He is torn by internal conflicts and struggles to build his career under a repressive regime. Yevgeny is simultaneously a sad and heroic figure. Moral and artistic issues fill the memoir as Yevgeny tries to make sense of his terrifying
vulnerability as a Jew. Yevgeny falls in love, defeating the physical and moral assaults he has suffered.
Finalists:
Loudmouth: Emma Goldman vs. America (A Love Story).
