Research Guides: Handy Topics in the Curriculum Department: Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children

Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children

The Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children was established as an annual award for promoting and recognizing excellence in the writing of nonfiction for children. The name Orbis Pictus, commemorates the work of Johannes Amos Comenius, Orbis Pictus—The World in Pictures (1657), considered to be the first book actually planned for children.

Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children Website

Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children 2024

Border Crossings

The fire of stars : the life and brilliance of the woman who discovered what stars are made of
Indigenous ingenuity : a celebration of traditional North American knowledge
Hidden systems : water, electricity, the internet, and the secrets behind the systems we use every day
Ketanji Brown Jackson : a justice for all
Game of freedom : Mestre Bimba and the art of Capoeira

Cool green : amazing remarkable trees
Stars of the night : the courageous children of the Czech Kindertransport
Polar! Wildlife at the ends of the earth
Breaking the mold : changing the face of climate science
The bees of Notre Dame
Benito Juárez fights for justice
On the tip of a wave : how Ai Weiwei's art is changing the tide
This is tap : Savion Glover finds his funk

Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children 2023

Blue : a history of the color as deep as the sea and as wide as the sky

Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children 2022

Nina : a story of Nina Simone

Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children 2021

Above the rim: how Elgin Baylor changed basketball

Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children 2020

A place to land : Martin Luther King Jr. and the speech that inspired a nation

Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children 2019

Between the lines : how Ernie Barnes went from the football field to the art gallery

Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children 2018

Grand Canyon

Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children 2017

Some writer! : the story of E. B. White

Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children 2016

Drowned city : Hurricane Katrina & New Orleans

Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children 2015

The family Romanov : murder, rebellion & the fall of Imperial Russia

Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children 2014

A splash of red : the life and art of Horace Pippin

Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children 2013

Monsieur Marceau

Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children 2012

Balloons over Broadway : the true story of the puppeteer of Macy's Parade

Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children 2011

Ballet for Martha : making Appalachian Spring

Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children 2010

The secret world of Walter Anderson

Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children 2009

Amelia Earhart : the legend of the lost aviator

Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children 2008

M.L.K. : journey of a King

Black and white airmen : their true history
Spiders
Helen Keller: her life in pictures
Muckrakers : how Ida Tarbell, Upton Sinclair, and Lincoln Steffens helped expose scandal, inspire reform, and invent investigative journalism
Venom

3-D ABC: a structural alphabet
Animals in the house
Clarabelle: making milk and so much more
Living color
Snow baby
Tracking trash : flotsam, jetsam, and the science of ocean motion
The wall : growing up behind the Iron Curtain

Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children 2007

Quest for the tree kangaroo : an expedition to the cloud forest of New Guinea

Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children 2006

Children of the Great Depression

Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children 2005

York's adventures with Lewis and Clark : an African-American's part in the great expedition

Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children 2004

An American plague : the true and terrifying story of the yellow fever epidemic of 1793

Empire State Building: when New York reached for the skies
In defense of liberty : the story of America's Bill of Rights
Leonardo, beautiful dreamer
The man who made time travel
Shutting out the sky : life in the tenements of New York, 1880-1924

Capital
The daring Nellie Bly: America's star reporter
Getting away with murder : the true story of the Emmett Till case
Jack : the early years of John F. Kennedy
The Library of Alexandria
The shortest day: celebrating the Winter Solstice
The White House : an illustrated history
The Wright sister: Katherine Wright and her famous brothers

Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children 2003

When Marian sang : the true recital of Marian Anderson : the voice of a century

Confucius : the golden rule
Emperor's silent army: terracotta warriors of ancient China
Phineas Gage : a gruesome but true story about brain science
Tenement : immigrant life on the Lower East Side
To fly : the story of the Wright brothers

Ansel Adams: America's photographer
The great serum race : blazing the Iditarod Trail
Life on earth : the story of evolution
Saladin : noble Prince of Islam
The signers : the 56 stories behind the Declaration of Independence
This our dark country : the American settlers of Liberia
Under the ice
Young adventurer's guide to Everest: fram avalanche to zopkio

Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children 2002

Black potatoes : the story of the great Irish famine, 1845-1850

Animals in flight
B. Franklin, printer
The Brooklyn Bridge
Gandhi
Hatshepsut: his majesy, herself
Hidden worlds : looking through a scientist's microscope
Leonardo's horse
Vincent van Gogh : portrait of an artist
The yellow house: Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin side by side

Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children 2001

Hurry freedom : African Americans in Gold Rush California

Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children 2000

Through my eyes

At her majesty's request: an African princess in Victorian England
Clara Schumann : piano virtuoso
Mapping the world
The snake scientist
The top of the world : climbing Mount Everest

About reptiles: a guide for children
Babe Didrikson Zaharias : the making of a champion
Bound for America : the forced migration of Africans to the New World
Building the book Cathedral
A child's book of art : discover great paintings
Einstein : visionary scientist
Fire in their eyes: wildfires and the people who fight them
In search of the spirit : the living national treasures of Japan
Kids on strike!
The mystery of the hieroglyphics: the story of the Rosetta Stone and the race to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics
A nest of dinosaurs
Rushmore
Tallchief : America's prima ballerina
William Shakespeare & the Globe

Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children 1999

Shipwreck at the bottom of the world : the extraordinary true story of Shackleton and the Endurance

Behind the mask : the life of Queen Elizabeth I
Discovering the Inca Ice Maiden : my adventures on Ampato
Duke Ellington : the piano prince and his orchestra
Frontier merchants: Lionel and Barron Jacobs and the Jewish pioneers who settled the West
Joan of Arc
Light shining through the mist: a photobiography of Dian Fossey
Looking back : a book of memories
Martha Graham, a dancer's life
On the home front: growing up in wartime England
Pioneer girl : growing up on the prairie
Restless spirit : the life and work of Dorothea Lange
Safari
Samuel Adams : the father of American Independence
Snowflake Bentley
What's the deal? : Jefferson, Napoleon, and the Louisiana Purchase

Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children 1998

An extraordinary life : the story of a monarch butterfly

A drop of water : a book of science and wonder
A tree is growing
Charles A. Lindbergh : a human hero
Kennedy assassinated! : the world mourns : a reporter's story
Digger: the tragic fate of the California Indians from the missions to the gold rush

Animal dads
The brain : our nervous system
Catching the fire : Philip Simmons, blacksmith
The Dead Sea scrolls
Dinosaur ghosts : the mystery of Coelophysis
Fiery vision : the life and death of John Brown
The Great Wall
A log's life
Passage to freedom : the Sugihara story
The planet hunters: the search for other worlds
The snake book
Leon's story

Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children 1997

Leonardo da Vinci

The abracadabra kid : a writer's life
A desert scrapbook : dawn to dusk in the Sonoran Desert
A strange and distant shore : Indians of the Great Plains in exile
Dia's story cloth
Free to dream : the making of a poet : Langston Hughes
Growing up in coal country
Hurricanes : Earth's mightiest storms
John Steinbeck
Mandela: from the life of the south african statesman
Nearer nature
Starry messenger : a book depicting the life of a famous scientist, mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, physicist, Galileo Galilei
We have conquered pain
Who were the founding fathers?
With needle and thread : a book about quilts

Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children 1996

The great fire

Air: the elements
The book of North American owls
Everglades
Fire in the forest: a cycle of growth and renewal
The golden city: Jerusalem's 3,000 years
In search of the Grand Canyon
Learning from the Dalai Lama: secrets of the wheel of time
The life and times of the honeybee
Listen for the bus : David's story
The magic of Mozart : Mozart, The magic flute, and the Salzburg marionettes
Raptor rescue! : an eagle flies free
Summer ice : life along the Antarctic peninsula
The underground railroad
Unraveling fibers
When plague strikes : the Black Death, smallpox, AIDS

Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children 1995

Safari beneath the sea : the wonder world of the North Pacific Coast

Ancient ones : the world of the old-growth Douglas fir
Animals who have won our hearts
Cheap raw material: how our youngest workers are exploited and abused
Cleopatra
Fur, feathers, and flippers : how animals live where they do
I am an American : a true story of Japanese internment
Jazz : my music, my people
Lives of the writers : comedies, tragedies (and what the neighbors thought)
Rosie, a visiting dog's story
Science to the rescue
Squish! a wetland walk
Take a look : an introduction to the experience of art
Unconditional surrender : U.S. Grant and the Civil War
Vanilla, chocolate & strawberry : the story of your favorite flavors

Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children 1994

Across America on an emigrant train

Making sense: animal perception and communication
To the top of the world : adventures with Arctic wolves

Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children 1993

Children of the Dust Bowl : the true story of the school at Weedpatch Camp

Come back, salmon
Talking with artists

A twilight struggle: the life of John Fitzgerald Kennedy
The amazing potato : a story in which the Incas, Conquistadors, Marie Antoinette, Thomas Jefferson, wars, famines, immigrants, and french fries all play a part
An Indian winter
Antarctica: the last unspoiled continent
Bard of Avon : the story of William Shakespeare
The Great St. Lawrence seaway
Hopscotch around the world
The long road to Gettysburg
Surtsey: the newest place on Earth
The Tainos : the people who welcomed Columbus
Wings along the waterway

Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children 1992

Flight : the journey of Charles Lindbergh

A young painter : the life and paintings of Wang Yani-- China's extraordinary young artist
Appalachia : the voices of sleeping birds
Batman : exploring the world of bats
Bully for you, Teddy Roosevelt!
Dawn to dusk in the Galapagos
The discovery of the Americas
Earthquakes
N. C. Wyeth's pilgrims
The painter's eye : learning to look at contemporary American art
Pueblo boy : growing up in two worlds
Pueblo storyteller
The remarkable voyages of Captain Cook
Summer of fire: Yellowstone 1988
Voyager to the planets
The Wright brothers : how they invented the airplane

Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children 1991

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Christopher Columbus : voyager to the unknown
The clover and the bee : a book of pollination
Columbus, and the world around him
Dinosaur dig
Giraffes, the sentinels of the Savannas
Good Queen Bess : the story of Elizabeth I of England
The magic school bus, lost in the solar system
The many lives of Benjamin Franklin
Mom can't see me
My Hiroshima
Oceans
The Oregon Trail
The riddle of the Rosetta Stone
Totem pole
Wolves
Woodsong

Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children 1990

The great little Madison

The great American gold rush
The news about dinosaurs

None selected this year

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