#CybilsAwards Backlist Book List: Pivoting Pandemic Reads

It’s either emblematic of the COVID-19 pandemic or the most over-used word of 2020. Either way, we couldn’t resist using it for this week’s Backlist Book List! We promise it is more riveting than pivoting.

Laurie Halse Anderson’s award-winning book Fever 1793 was published in 2000, six years before the Cybils Awards launched. It is a historical fiction novel about Mattie Cook, a 14-year-old girl living in Philadelphia during the Yellow Fever epidemic.

Becky Herzog’s GoodReads review explains better than we can why Fever 1793 was such an apropos read for 2020:

No matter the decade or century an epidemic would be scary, terrifying even. But at a time when doctors were absolutely clueless yet confident that they knew what they were doing, it’s extremely terrifying. ~Becky’s Reviews

With Laurie Halse Anderson’s book as our foundation, we found some Cybils-nominated “read alikes.” Like our Voices for Social Change book list, this collection skews heavily – but not exclusively! – toward nonfiction.

The best part?

Adult readers will be just as fascinated by these books as the intended audience.

Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys 2011 Finalist Young Adult Fiction
Blood and Germs:  The Civil War Battle Against Wounds and Disease (Medical Fiascoes) by Gail Jarrow 2020 Nominee Middle Grade Nonfiction
Breakthrough!: How Three People Saved “Blue Babies” and Changed Medicine Forever by Jim Murphy 2016 Nominee Middle Grade Nonfiction
Bubonic Panic: When Plague Invaded America by Gail Jarrow 2016 Finalist Middle Grade Nonfiction
The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Rivalry, Adventure, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements (Young Readers Edition) by Sam Kean 2018 Finalist Middle Grade Nonfiction
A Fever, a Flight, and a Fight for the World The Rwendigo Tales,Book Four by Jennifer A Myhre 2018 Nominee Young Adult Speculative Fiction
How They Croaked: The Awful Ends of the Awfully Famous by Georgia Bragg, illustrated by Kevin O’Malley 2011 Finalist Middle Grade Nonfiction
I Feel Better with a Frog in My Throat: History’s Strangest Cures written and illustrated by Carlyn Beccia 2011 Winner Elementary/Middle Grade Nonfiction
A Plague of Bogles How to Catch a Bogle, Book 2 b7 Catherine Jinks 2015 Nominee Elementary/Middle Grade Speculative Fiction
Poison: Deadly Deeds, Perilous Professions, and Murderous Medicines by Sarah Albee 2017 Finalist Middle Grade Nonfiction
The Secret of the Yellow Death: A True Story of Medical Sleuthing by Suzanne Jurmain 2010 Winner Young Adult Nonfiction
Very, Very, Very Dreadful: The Influenza Pandemic of 1918 by Albert Marrin 2018 Nominee Young Adult Nonfiction
Wily and the Canine Pandemic by Michelle Weidenbenner 2017 Nominee Elementary/Middle Grade Speculative Fiction

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