Living Canon

Michael L. Printz Award 2005: Complete list of winners

The Michael L. Printz Award, one of the most prestigious honors in young adult literature, celebrated a standout winner in 2005 with Meg Rosoff’s How I Live Now. The Printz Award, established by the American Library Association to recognize the most outstanding literary work written for teens, has long been a bellwether for excellence in YA fiction—and Rosoff’s debut novel exemplified exactly why the recognition matters. Her haunting story of a American teenager navigating love, family, and survival during an imagined conflict in England captured something essential about the adolescent experience: that strange collision of personal upheaval and larger, historical forces beyond our control.

What made Rosoff’s win particularly significant was the way it underscored a shift in how the literary establishment viewed young adult literature. How I Live Now wasn’t a book that talked down to its audience or wrapped its themes in neat resolutions. Instead, it offered something more challenging and ultimately more rewarding—a narrative voice that felt authentically teenage while tackling weighty questions about identity, belonging, and mortality. The 2005 Printz Award winner demonstrated that YA literature could be both commercially appealing and genuinely literary, a lesson that would continue to shape the genre in the years to come.

Young Adult