AAAS and Subaru are proud to announce the finalists for the 2023 AAAS/Subaru SB&F Prize for Excellence in Science Books in the Children’s Science Picture 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 2023 winner will be selected from among the following finalists:

• Fox: A Circle of Life Story, by Isabel Thomas. Illustrated by Daniel Egnéus. Bloomsbury Children's Books, 2021.

  In the frost-covered forest of early spring, fox is on a mission to find food for her three cubs. As they grow, she teaches them how to survive in the wild. Until one day, fox dies. Her body goes back to earth and grass and air, nourishing the world around her and bringing the forest to life. Death is not just an end, it’s also a beginning. With gorgeous illustrations and lyrical, kid-friendly text, Fox: A Circle of Life Story answers the big scientific question: What happens when animals die?

• Good Eating: The Short Life of Krill, by Matt Lilley. Illustrated Dan Tavis. Tilbury House Publishers, 2022.

  A fun exploration of a tiny animal at the base of the ocean food chain. Just 2 inches long full-grown, this little guy is the foundation of the Southern Ocean food chain... “Hi. What are you? You appear to be an egg. You are an egg sinking. For many days, you sink. You sink a mile down, and you keep sinking down… down… until…” The unidentified narrator follows one krill among billions as it pursues its brief existence, eating and eating while metamorphosing from one thing into another and trying to avoid being eaten. Questions and advice are hurled at the krill on every page, but the krill never responds―because, after all, krill can’t talk, and this is nonfiction. Krill are the largest animals able to catch and eat phytoplankton, and they in turn are eaten by the largest animals ever to live on earth―blue whales―as well as by seals, penguins, and a host of others. In other words, krill are really good at eating, and they make really good eating. And that makes them the most important animals in the high-latitude oceans.

• HeroRat!: Magawa, a Lifesaving Rodent, by Jodie Parachini. Illustrated by Keiron Ward and Jason Dewhirst. Albert Whitman & Company, 2022.

  Magawa is an African giant pouched rat with a special skill: sniffing out buried land mines. Follow this HeroRat from training at a university in Tanzania, to working in the field in Cambodia, to winning a gold medal for her efforts to make land safe for humans and animals once again.

• Tu Youyou's Discovery: Finding a Cure for Malaria, by Songju Ma Daemicke. Illustrated by Lin. Albert Whitman & Company, 2021.

  Tu Youyou had been interested in science and medicine since she was a child, so when malaria started infecting people all over the world in 1969, she went to work finding a treatment. Trained as a medical researcher in college and healed by traditional medicine techniques when she was young, Tu Youyou started experimenting with natural Chinese remedies. The treatment she discovered through years of research and experimentation is still used all over the world today.

Winners will be announced in February 2023.