School Library Journal

Over a 3-week period, our high-powered panel of 15 judges—including some of the world’s top writers for children and teens—will each read two titles and determine which book advances to the next round. SLJ will post these judges’ carefully considered decisions daily, and announce the grand prize winner on April 1. The judges’ identities will be revealed beginning on Wednesday, February 6.

BOB began in 2009 as the brainchild of educators Monica Edinger and Roxanne Feldman of the Dalton School in New York City, and Jonathan Hunt, a school librarian in Modesto, CA. The literary smack-down was inspired by the Morning News’s Tournament of Books, a competition that features the previous year’s best novels for adults. Over the years, many leading authors of kids’ books have taken part in BOB, including Lois Lowry, M. T. Anderson, and national ambassadors for young people’s literature Jon Scieszka, Katherine Paterson, and Walter Dean Myers.