Dundurn Press is excited to announce that Sadia by Colleen Nelson has won the High Plains Book Award in the YA category!

Sadia follows 15-year-old Sadia Ahmed as she struggles to navigate high school, her passion for basketball, and her Muslim faith, as well as finding the courage to stand up for herself in the face of discrimination. Booklist called Sadia “compelling and relevant,” and in 2019 the book was both nominated for the Forest of Reading’s 2019 Red Maple Award and won the 2019 Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children’s Book Award.

The High Plains Book Award was established by the Billings Public Library Board to celebrate regional literature that reflects life in the High Plains in both the US and Canada. This is Colleen’s second nomination for the award, after her 2017 novel Blood Brothers. Lear more about the High Plains Book Award here.

We are also excited to announce that Pam Withers’s Stowaway has been nominated for the Forest of Reading Red Maple Award!

Praised by School Library Journal for it’s “fast paced and suspenseful plot,” Stowaway is an adventure story that follows Owen as he sneaks onto a yacht that turns out to be a human smuggling operation. With the help of first mate Arturo, Owen must find a way to save himself and the children on board the ship. This is Pam Withers’s second Red Maple nomination, following the 2019 nomination of Tracker’s Canyon. Congratulations, Pam!