Washington, DC -  The winner of the 2019 Grateful American Book Prize is Associate Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, for The Beloved World of Sonia Sotomayor [Delacorte Books for Young Readers].

Author and publisher David Bruce Smith, who co-founded the Prize with the late Dr. Bruce Cole, former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, says Beloved World is a “compelling life-lesson for America’s adolescents.  It also embodies the essence of the Prize, which is to encourage seventh to ninth graders to read historical fiction and nonfiction.”

The Grateful American Book Prize comes with an award of $13,000, a lifetime pass to the New-York Historical Society, and a medallion created by the American artist, Clarice Smith. The October 17th presentation will be at the Corcoran School of the Arts in Washington, D.C.

Honorable Mentions for the 2019 Prize will be given to Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Tonya Bolden, co-authors of Dark Sky Rising: Reconstruction And The Dawn Of Jim Crow [Scholastic Focus], and Mike Winchell, author of The Electric War: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, And The Race To Light The World [Henry Holt].

The “Honorable Mention” authors receive the medallion, and $500.

Smith and Dr. Cole established it, hoping to prompt writers and publishers to produce more historically accurate books about the personalities and events of America’s past.  “Our aim is to provide children with a new, more exciting view of history at a time when much of nation’s youth is bored with it.”