The association’s Stonewall Children’s and Young Adult Literature Award, for an English-language book “of exceptional merit relating to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered experience,” went this year to “Almost Perfect,” by Brian Katcher, a novel about a high school senior who grapples with his romantic encounter with a girl who turns out to be transgendered; the girl later attempts suicide.

Ms. Vanderpool, the Newbery winner, said she wrote “Moon Over Manifest” over five years, beginning in 2001, stealing bits of time while raising her four children.

“I would write during nap times, during ‘Sesame Street,’ that kind of stuff,” said Ms. Vanderpool, 46, by telephone from her home in Wichita, Kan., where she was born and reared. “It was just a nice little escape, a nice hobby. Then fortunately this year it got published.”

As part of her research, she traveled to Frontenac, Kan., in the southeast corner of the state, a town she called “the bootlegging capital of the Midwest.” (It also happened to be the home of her mother’s side of the family.) There she read newspaper articles on microfilm at the library and scoured old yearbooks helpfully supplied by local residents.