Odyssey Award facts for kids

The Odyssey Award for Excellence in Audiobook Production is a special prize given every year. It celebrates the best audiobooks made for children and young adults in English in the United States. The award is given by the American Library Association (ALA).

Two groups within the ALA, the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) and the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), work together to present this award. It is also supported by Booklist magazine. The award looks at how well an audiobook is made. This includes the narrator's voice, the sound quality, background music, and sound effects. The award is named after Odyssey, a very old story from ancient Greece. This reminds us that storytelling has been around for a long, long time!

The Odyssey Award started in 2008. It was created because it's important to support audiobooks just as much as printed books.

How Audiobooks Win the Odyssey Award

This award looks for the best audiobooks for young people. Here are some of the rules for an audiobook to be considered:

• All types of stories can be considered, even "read-alongs" where you listen and read at the same time.
• The audiobook must have been published in the correct time frame.
• Audiobooks that were already released in a different audio format before are not allowed.
• The audiobook must be for children or young adults, up to 18 years old. Audiobooks for adults are not eligible.
• Audiobooks with one narrator or a full cast of voices can win.
• Audiobooks first published in another country can be considered if they are also sold in the United States.
• Only audiobooks in English are considered. However, they can use words from other languages if it makes sense in the story.
• If no audiobook is good enough, no award will be given that year.
• The award goes to the people who produced the audiobook.

Odyssey Award Winners and Honorees

Since 2008, at least one audiobook has been named an "Honor Audiobook" each year. In some years, up to five audiobooks received this honor. Starting in 2022, two audiobooks can win the main award. One is for children's audiobooks, and the other is for young adult audiobooks.

Who Has Won the Most Awards?

Listening Library has won the most Odyssey Awards, with 5 wins. Harper has won 4 times. Live Oak Media and Scholastic have each won 3 awards.

Katherine Kellgren is a narrator who has been honored many times. She has narrated five Honor Audiobooks. Three of these were from the "Jacky Faber" book series by L. A. Meyer.

In 2009, Sherman Alexie won the Odyssey Award for his audiobook The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. He also won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature for the printed version of the same book.

In 2020, Jarrett J. Krosoczka won the Odyssey Award for his audiobook Hey, Kiddo. He wrote, illustrated, and narrated this book. The print version of Hey, Kiddo was also a finalist for the National Book Award for Young People's Literature.

More to Explore

• Category:Audiobooks