This week, The New Yorker will be announcing the longlists for the 2019 National Book Awards. This morning, we present the ten contenders in the category of Young People’s Literature. Check back tomorrow morning for Translated Literature .

Twenty years after Laurie Halse Anderson published her best-selling novel, “Speak,” about a teen-age girl who stops talking after she is sexually assaulted, the author has written a memoir, “Shout,” in which the teen-age victim of rape is herself. Her new book, composed in poems, is a deeply personal account of pain and anger that also serves as a call to action—to put an end to sexual violence.

View more

“Shout,” the only memoir on this year’s longlist for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, is a personal reckoning with the past, but several other contenders, fictional and nonfictional, grapple with trauma and triumph of historical scope: “The Undefeated,” written by Kwame Alexander and illustrated by the New Yorker cover artist Kadir Nelson, about black life through the ages; “A Place to Belong,” by Cynthia Kadohata, about a Japanese-American family deported after Pearl Harbor; and “1919: The Year that Changed America,” by Martin Sandler, about century-old political crises that still resonate today. In 2013, Cynthia Kadohata won a National Book Award, and five other authors on this year’s longlist have been previously recognized by the National Book Foundation.

The full list is below.

Kwame Alexander and Kadir Nelson, “The Undefeated”

Versify / Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Laurie Halse Anderson, “Shout”

Viking Books for Young Readers / Penguin Random House

Akwaeke Emezi, “Pet”

Make Me a World / Penguin Random House

Cynthia Kadohata, “A Place to Belong”

Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books / Simon & Schuster

Jason Reynolds, “Look Both Ways: A Tale Told in Ten Blocks”

Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books / Simon & Schuster

Randy Ribay, “Patron Saints of Nothing”

Kokila / Penguin Random House

Laura Ruby, “Thirteen Doorways, Wolves Behind Them All”

Balzer + Bray / HarperCollins Publishers

Martin W. Sandler, “1919: The Year That Changed America”

Bloomsbury Children’s Books / Bloomsbury Publishing

Hal Schrieve, “Out of Salem”

Triangle Square / Seven Stories Press

Colleen AF Venable and Ellen T. Crenshaw, “Kiss Number 8”

First Second Books / Macmillan Publishers

The judges for the category this year are An Na, the author of four novels, including “A Step from Heaven,” a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award; Elana K. Arnold, whose novel “What Girls Are Made Of” was a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award; Kristen Gilligan, the co-owner of Tattered Cover Book Store, in Denver; Varian Johnson, the author of “The Parker Inheritance” and a member of the faculty at Vermont College of Fine Arts; and Deborah Taylor, a retired librarian and an adjunct professor of young-adult literature at the University of Maryland.

A previous version of this post misidentified which novel by Elana K. Arnold was a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award.