Newbery Medal 2025: Complete list of winners

The American Library Association announced the 2025 Newbery Medal winner this week, and it’s a choice that feels both surprising and inevitable. Erin Entrada Kelly’s The First State of Being claims the most prestigious award in children’s literature, a recognition that underscores the book’s quiet power and its refusal to talk down to young readers. Kelly, who previously won the Newbery in 2018 for Ley, brings her signature lyrical prose and emotional intelligence to a story that clearly resonated with the award committee’s judges.

What makes Kelly’s win particularly noteworthy this year is the book’s thematic ambition—it grapples with profound questions about self-discovery and what it means to belong, topics that feel increasingly urgent in contemporary children’s literature. The Newbery Medal, awarded annually since 1922 to the author of the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children, continues its tradition of honoring work that challenges young readers while speaking to something deeply true about the human experience. With Kelly’s name now etched alongside Newbery Medal recipients past and present, The First State of Being joins a pantheon of titles that define generations of childhood reading.

The full list of 2025 Newbery Medal honors and Caldecott Medal winners alongside related awards appears below, offering a comprehensive look at what the library community deemed most worthy this year.

Children’s Literature

• The First State of Being by Erin Entrada Kelly