Charlotte Huck Award

The winner of the 2017 NCTE Charlotte Huck Award® is

After the Fall (How Humpty Got Back Up Again)

by Dan Santat

Roaring Brook Press, 2017

The NCTE Charlotte Huck Award® for Outstanding Fiction for Children was established in 2014 to promote and recognize excellence in the writing of fiction for children. This award recognizes fiction that has the potential to transform children’s lives by inviting compassion, imagination, and wonder.

This picture book will resonate with all ages. On the back of the book, we are reminded that "Life begins when you get back up." Santat's epilogue of the rather unsatisfying nursery rhyme about an egg that falls down and gets patched up is all kinds of brilliant. My 5th graders gasped aloud at the ending. They were like, "Wait. WHAT?!?!" This book will change your thinking about Humpty Dumpty and it will remind everyone that we shouldn't let our setbacks keep us down.

I am currently serving on the NCTE Charlotte Huck Award Committee. In our deliberations at NCTE this year, narrowing our list of 45 books down to one winner, five honor books, and eight recommended books, we kept coming back to the award criteria as we deliberated over each book. "The potential to transform children's lives" was a phrase we used over and over again when we spoke about this book. Don't miss it. It's an amazing book.