YAdudebooks.ca is marking its one-year anniversary this month with something exciting: the 2022 YAdudebooks Awards, an inaugural annual celebration of young-adult fiction and nonfiction selected by our professional team of reviewers.

Our book-review and author-interview website serves teachers, librarians, parents and teens, especially those who share our passion for getting pre-teen and teen boys reading.

Click on any of the book covers here to see the reviews:

And please join us in congratulating….

Jawad Arash & Trent Reedy : Aladdin Publishing
Sigmund Brouwer: Tundra Books
Jeff Fleischer: Zest/Lerner Books
Barbara Gregorich: Cross Your Heart/City Lights
Spencer Hall: Athenium Books
Katie Henry: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins
Catherine Inglis: James Lorimer Books
Kosoko Jackson: Sourcebooks Fire
Liz Kessler: Aladdin Publishing
Elisa Nebolsine: New Harbinger
Michael S. Neiberg: Amber Books
Edeet Ravel: Groundwood
David Alexander Robertson: Puffin Books
Alisha Sevigny: Dundurn Press
Francisco X. Stork: Scholastic Press

I founded YAdudebooks in March 2021 as a “COVID project,” to keep isolation at bay and expand on my passion for encouraging boys to read.

Aimed at young-adult (YA) and middle-grade teachers, librarians, parents and teen readers, it now offers well over 100 book reviews and several dozen author interviews, including some of the most prominent YA authors in the world. (Thank you, all authors who’ve agreed to be part of our inaugural year.)

But of all the markers of success we’ve enjoyed (including authors and librarians thanking us for this specialized site), what gives me the greatest pride is the contribution of our 14 book reviewers, many of them published authors, teachers and librarians. (And that’s not even counting our former book trailers reviewer, Irfan Rafi of Pakistan, and our dedicated techie, Darian Tichler of Vancouver, Canada).

So, when I asked each of our reviewers to select their favorite book(s) of all the books they’d reviewed the past year (one fiction, one nonfiction if they liked), I loved the enthusiasm of their replies. And I am unspeakably proud of all they’ve contributed, for the love of literacy, the past year.

Who are they? See them here: https://yadudebooks.ca/reviewers/

They are…

• Jay Gill, an actor/author/business manager in Brooklyn, New York, USA
• Jon Gill, a teacher in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
• Matt Gill, a nonprofit organization manager in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA (and yes, the three Gills are brothers)
• Doni Gratton, a teacher/librarian in Vancouver, Canada
• Ed Moore, a teacher and founder of his own literacy website in Manchester, UK
• Weldon Ngetich, a teacher/writer in Nairobi, Kenya
• Nicholas Rafael, a teacher and poet/essayist in Laval, Quebec, Canada
• Mark David Smith, a teacher and author in Port Coquitlam, BC, Canada
• Nickcorol Somerville, a retired teacher and author in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
• James Steeves, a teacher/librarian in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada
• Kevin Velayo, a business manager in the Philippines (also an administrative assistant for YAdudebooks)
• And me, Pam Withers, a YA author in Vancouver, Canada

In addition, there’s Jacob Seaman, an I.T. student in Seattle, Washington who started off doing administrative work for the site, and will shortly be submitting reviews, and Meriem B. of Biskra, Algeria, who is currently scribbling her first review for us with an eye to joining the team.

Clearly, from the very start, the goal was to be international, and we’ve achieved that. Any educator, parent or teen who reads English can benefit from our reviews, profiles, articles and more.

Congratulations to the 2022 YAdudebooks Award winners. Please pass this along to your friends and colleagues, and stay tuned for more reviews and author interviews (posted the first Friday of each month), and the winners of next year’s reviewers’ choice awards.

Finally, thanks to the authors who keep writing, and the publishers who keep publishing, YA books with appeal to boys in particular. It’s our special niche!

– Pam Withers, YAdudebooks founder