Finalists for 2021 Middle Grades Science Book Award

AAAS and Subaru are proud to announce the finalists for the 2021 AAAS/Subaru SB&F Prize for Excellence in Science Books in the Middle Grades Science Book category. The Prize celebrates outstanding science writing and illustration for children and young adults and is meant to encourage the writing and publishing of high-quality science books for all ages. Longlists for all four categories were announced in October.

The 2021 winner will be selected from among the following finalists:

• Can You Hear the Trees Talking?: Discovering the Hidden Life of the Forest, by Peter Wohlleben. Translated by Shelley Tanaka. Greystone Books, 2019.

  Did you know that trees have parents, and tree grandparents with wrinkles? That tree kids go to school for hundreds of years? That there is such a thing as the forest internet? And that trees make us healthy and strong. Sometimes, even trees get sick, but we can help them heal. Can You Hear the Trees Talking? shares the mysteries and magic of the forest in language kids will love and understand.

• Condor Comeback, by Sy Montgomery. Photographs by Tianne Strombeck. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020.

  Sy Montgomery employs her skill for on-the-ground reporting, shrewd observation, and stunning narrative prose to detail the efforts of scientists, volunteers, and everyday citizens to get California condors back in the wild. In particular, Montgomery profiles employees at the Santa Barbara Zoo who have worked tirelessly to raise abandoned chicks, nurse sick birds back to health, and conduct research that can support legislation to ban what is probably the largest threat to the existence of the wild condor: lead bullets. In turns affectionate and frustrated, hopeful and heartbreaking, Montgomery’s powerful prose does justice to these ancient, sociable, and elegant creatures.

• Eclipse Chaser: Science in the Moon's Shadow, by Ilima Loomis. Photographs by Amanda Cowan. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019.

  On August 21, 2017, much of America stood still and looked up as a wide swath of the country experienced totality—a full solar eclipse. Even in areas outside the path of totality, people watched in awe as the moon cast its shadow on the sun. For most, this was simply a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Not so for Shadia Habbal, who travels the world in search of solar eclipses in order to study the sun’s corona. Solar wind and storms originating in the corona can have big effects on our planet. They can disrupt technology, expose aircraft to radiation, and even influence global climate change.

• Growing Up Gorilla: How a Zoo Baby Brought Her Family Together, by Clare Hodgson Meeker. Lerner Publishing Group, 2020.

  This heartwarming true story chronicles what happened after a mother gorilla gave birth for the first time and then walked away from her newborn baby at Seattle’s Woodland Park. The dedicated staff worked tirelessly to find innovative ways for mother and baby to build a relationship. The efforts were ultimately successful, as baby Yola bonded with her mother and the rest of the family group.

Winners will be announced in January 2021.

The finalists for the Children’s Science Picture Book category was announced earlier in the week.