H ere we bring you a roundup of winners of top audiobook awards for teens and young adults of recent years. These audiobook productions have all been singled out for their great storytelling, from the artistry of verse novels performed by the author to full-cast adaptations of graphic novels.
🏆 2025 Odyssey Award: Best Audiobook for Young Adults
This is the beautifully written coming-of-age memoir of a closeted gay Black boy in the American South, narrated by the author, an accomplished spoken word artist. The narration gives audiences “the simultaneous experience of a slam poetry reading and an intimate conversation between friends”, said the Chair of the Odyssey Award Committee.
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🏆 2024 Odyssey Award: Best Audiobook for Young Adults
YA thriller in which a prestigious school in Washington, D.C., turns out to have dangerous secrets. When the principal is murdered, three teenage boys become the prime suspects. Can they track down the real killer and clear their names before they get arrested?
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Leigh Bardugo, Dani Pendergast (illustrator)
🏆 2023 Audie Awards Best Audiobook for Young Adults
A graphic novel adaptation of the short story from 2015, subtitled “A Darkling Prequel Story ”, part of the bestselling series that started with Shadow and Bone Grishaverse or who is invested in the series and wants a glimpse of the backstory of Aleksander. In this book he is a lonely boy travelling with his mother, trying to train his extraordinary powers and find a safe haven in a dangerous, northern world.
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🏆 2022 Audie Awards Best Audiobook for Young Adults
Raffy pours all his dreams and effort into his hobby: designing and crafting costumes based on anime and game characters. He is ready to participate in the world of competitive cosplay, but there is a complicating factor: his ex-boyfriend, Luca. Both boys are keeping their creative arts and crafts secret from their families; Raffy because his art gallerist mother looks down on it, Luca because his parents think boys should stick to soccer. Alternate chapters of the novel sensitively trace the development of their relationship and breakup. In the present, as the competition gets underway, can Raffy learn to be a team player, and can broken hearts be put back together?
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🏆 2021 Audie Awards Best Audiobook for Young Adults
This novel in verse by multi-award winning writer Acevedo is alternately narrated by two teenagers, Camino and Yahaira. Camino lives for the summers when her father visits her in the Dominican Republic. Yahaira lives in New York with her father. When their father dies in a plane crash they learn of each other for the first time. The story brims with both grief and love for their imperfect father, questions of identity, and an emerging sisterhood. Based on the crash in New York of Flight AA587 on its way to the Dominican Republic, this story is also an exploration of what it means to have tragedies that are both private and public.
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🏆 2021 Odyssey Award: Best Audiobook for Young Adults
Most of us know it happened: that during protests against the Vietnam War in the United States, at Kent State University on May 4th, 1970, the National Guard opened fire, killing four students and wounding more. What many of us don't know is exactly how and why it happened. Written in verse and a work of historical fiction , Kent State tells the story and answers those questions in the voices of people who were there.
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🏆 2020 Odyssey Award: Best Audiobook for Young Adults🏆 2020 Audie Awards Best Audiobook for Young Adults
Hey Kiddo is a graphic memoir so you’d think it would be hard to turn into an audiobook. Instead, it’s won two major audiobook awards. The author, Jarrett Krosoczka, narrates the story himself, with a cast that includes actors but also some family members.
Narrator: Jarrett J. Krosoczka, Jeanne Birdsall, Richard Ferrone, Jenna Lamia
Length: 2 hours and 50 minutes
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“Hey, Kiddo was a National Book Award finalist as a graphic memoir, recognising the literary power of Krosoczka’s personal story of his mother’s heroin addiction and childhood with alcoholic grandparents. It’s told from the point of view of Krosoczka at age 17, and teens forge an immediate connection with the author’s description of how his artistic talent helped him survive his upbringing.” Read more...
The 2020 Audie Awards: Best Multi-Voiced Performance
“Tomi Adeyemi’s action-filled and incredibly fast-paced novel is about 17 year old Zélie and her companions who have all suffered in different ways at the hands of the cruel king and their unjust world. In a tight race against time, they are on a quest to bring magic back to the land of Orïsha and restore power to the oppressed maji.” Read more...
Best West African Fantasy Books for Teenagers
Efua Traoré ,
Children's Author
“This book is important because it bears witness. It holds within its pages some of the urgency and anger of the Black Lives Matter movement and could even be an act of resistance in and of itself. The book is such a relevant read… We know the names and the statistics when it comes to police brutality in the USA but this story makes readers actually feel it.” Read more...
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