The shortlists are in, and now it’s up to the kids to decide who will take home this year’s Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children’s Book Awards.

The two annual prizes of $6,000 each recognize artistic excellence in writing and illustration in English-language Canadian picture books, middle-grade and young-adult literature. A nomination committee selected the shortlists, with two student juries from Scarborough’s Eastview Public School ultimately choosing the winners, to be announced at a school assembly in June.

Children’s picture book

• Africville, by Shauntay Grant; Eva Campbell, ill. (Groundwood Books)
• Go Show the World: A Celebration of Indigenous Heroes, Wab Kinew, Joe Morse, ill. (Tundra Books)
• Mustafa, Marie-Louise Gay (Groundwood)
• The Origin of Day and Night, Paula Ikuutaq Rumbolt; Lenny Lishchenko, ill. (Inhabit Media)
• Island in the Salish Sea, Sheryl McFarlane; Leslie Redhead, ill. (Orca Book Publishers)

Young adult/Middle reader 

• Fire Song, Adam Garnet Jones (Annick Press)
• No Fixed Address, Susin Nielsen (Tundra)
• Planet Grief, Monique Polak (Orca)
• Sadia, Colleen Nelson (Dundurn Press)
• Very Rich, Polly Horvath (Puffin Canada)