The 2023 Grateful American Book Prize is now accepting submissions. They should be works of non-fiction, fiction, or biographies suitable for 7^th to 9^th graders, published between August 1, 2022, and July 31, 2023.

“Over the past several decades schools have gradually de-emphasized history in the classroom with the result that kids today do not know who George Washington and Benjamin Franklin were,” according to David Bruce Smith, Cofounder of the Prize. “It’s been a lingering problem for quite some time and so, at the behest and in collaboration with the late Dr. Bruce Cole, the former Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, we established the Prize as an incentive for authors and publishers to focus on history for young readers. As Dr. Cole put it, ‘we are a country of historical amnesiacs’ and perhaps historical ‘page turners’ for kids may be just what the doctor ordered.”

The Prize comes with a $13,000 cash award in commemoration of the 13 original Colonies, a lifetime membership at the New-York Historical Society, and a medallion created by Smith’s mother, the renowned artist, Clarice Smith.

Honorable Mention recipients receive a cash award of $500 each, and the medallion.