2024 NATIONAL MEDAL
for Museum and Library Service Finalist

Adults

Baby Teeth

Afflicted with a chronic debilitating condition, Suzette Jensen nevertheless brought Hanna into the world, pleased and proud to start a family with her husband Alex. Estranged from her own mother, Suzette is determined to raise her daughter with the love, care, and support she was denied. Now seven-years-old, Hanna has yet to utter a word, despite being able to read and write. Defiant and anti-social, she refuses to behave in kindergarten classes and must be homeschooled. But Hanna is becoming more aggressive every day-- only behaving when she's with her father.

Rough Magic : Riding the World's Loneliest Horse Race

At the age of nineteen, Lara Prior-Palmer discovered a website devoted to "the world's longest, toughest horse race"--an annual competition of endurance and skill that involves dozens of riders racing a series of twenty-five wild ponies across 1,000 kilometers of Mongolian grassland. On a whim, she decided to enter the race. As she boarded a plane to East Asia, she was utterly unprepared for what awaited her. Riders often spend years preparing to compete in the Mongol Derby, a course that re-creates the horse messenger system developed by Genghis Khan, and many fail to finish.

All Our Wrong Todays

 

In Tom Barren's 2016, humanity thrives in a techno-utopian paradise of flying cars, moving sidewalks, and moon bases, where avocados never go bad and punk rock never existed, because it wasn't necessary. Except Tom just can't seem to find his place in this dazzling, idealistic world, and that's before his life gets turned upside down. Utterly blindsided by an accident of fate, Tom makes a rash decision that drastically changes not only his own life but the very fabric of the universe itself.

The Old Man

To all appearances, Dan Chase is a harmless retiree in Vermont with two big mutts and a grown daughter he keeps in touch with by phone. But most sixty-year-old widowers don't have multiple driver's licenses, savings stockpiled in banks across the country, and a bugout kit with two Beretta Nanos stashed in the spare bedroom closet. Most have not spent decades on the run. Thirty-five years ago, as a young hotshot in army intelligence, Chase was sent to Libya to covertly assist a rebel army.

My Ex-Life

David Hedges's life is coming apart at the seams. His job helping San Francisco rich kids get into the colleges of their parents choice is exasperating; his younger boyfriend has left him; and the beloved carriage house he rents is being sold. The last person he expects to hear from is Julie Fiske. It's been decades since they've spoken, and he's relieved to hear she's recovered from her brief, misguided first marriage. To him.