CLA Book of the Year for Children Award

The Canadian Library Association Book of the Year for Children Award is a literary award that annually recognizes one Canadian children's book. The book must be written in English and published in Canada during the preceding year (and nominated by the end of November). The writer must be a citizen or permanent resident of Canada.

The Book of the Year for Children Award is administered and presented by the Canadian Library Association/Association canadienne des bibliothèques (CLA). It was inaugurated in 1947 by an award to Roderick Haig-Brown for Starbuck Valley Winter and it has been presented to one book every year without exception from 1963.

The companion CLA Young Adult Book Award has been presented annually from 1981. As of 2016, two Book of the Year for Children criteria are "appeal to children up to and including age 12" and "creative (i.e., original) writing (i.e., fiction, poetry, narrative, non-fiction, retelling of traditional literature)". Corresponding criteria for the YA Book Award are "[appeal] to young adults between the ages of 13 and 18" and "fiction (novel, collection of short stories, or graphic novel)". Two books have won both the children's and young-adult awards (below).

There were two awards in 1966 and no award six times from 1948 to 1962. From 1967, the award-winning books were published during the preceding year; to 1965, most of the winning books were published during the second preceding year; the 1966 winners were published one each in 1964 and 1965.

Many of Canada's most beloved authors have won this award multiple times:

Two books have won the CLA Young Adult Book Award as well as the Book of the Year for Children: Shadow in Hawthorn Bay by Janet Lunn, in 1987, and Half Brother by Kenneth Oppel, in 2011.

Nine books named CLA Book of the Year for Children have also won the Governor General's Award for English-language children's literature, or the preceding Canada Council Children's Literature Prize, or earlier Governor General's Award for juvenile fiction (in all, conferred for English-language books from 1949 to 1958 and 1975 to present). The writers and CLA award dates were Richard S. Lambert 1950, Farley Mowat 1958, Kevin Major 1979, Cora Taylor 1986, Janet Lunn 1987, Michael Bedard 1991, Tim Wynne-Jones 1994, Pamela Porter 2006, Susin Nielsen 2013.

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