The first annual Dwayne McDuffie Award for Kids’ Comics will be announced at this year’s Kids Read Comics festival. Named for the highly respected comic book and animation writer and co-founder of Milestone Media who passed away in 2011, the award honors Dwayne McDuffie’s values and his legacy as a champion for meaningful, top-quality and broadly inclusive comics for young people.
The new award was developed in consultation with McDuffie's widow, writer Charlotte Fullerton McDuffie.
Following months of reading and discussion covering nearly a hundred titles, the judges for the inaugural award have delivered a short list from which the winner will be selected. The criteria for selection are excellence in writing and drawing; timelessness; diversity of content; and originality. The ten titles that the judges consider the top kids’ comics published in 2014 are:

Bird and Squirrel on Ice by James Burks

Cat Dad, King of the Goblins by Britt Wilson

Cleopatra in Space by Mike Maihack

Costume Quest: Invasion of the Candy Snatchers by Zac Gorman

El Deafo by Cece Bell

Hidden: A Child’s Story of the Holocaust by Loïc Dauvillier, illustrated by Marc Lizano and colored by Frank Salsedo

Hilda and the Black Hound by Luke Pearson

Lowriders in Space by By Cathy Camper, Illustrated by Raul the Third

The Magical Monsters of Turkey Hollow by Jim Henson & Jerry Juhl, adapted and illustrated by Roger Langridge

Sisters by Raina Telgemeier

The three judges came to their task from distinct professional perspectives on comics. Kids Read Comics co-founders Edith Donnell and Dan Merritt are, respectively, a youth and teen librarian with expertise in building a library comics collection and an Eisner-award nominated comic shop owner. Brigid Alverson is a respected comics journalist and reviewer who has written for School Library Journal and Publishers Weekly among others.
The Kids Read Comics weekend festival is a free event held at the Ann Arbor District Library in Michigan. This year’s event will take place on June 20 & 21, and the winner of the inaugural Dwayne McDuffie Award for Kids’ Comics will be announced on Saturday morning, June 20, following the festival's keynote kickoff.
Kids Read Comics is a Michigan-based nonprofit whose activities promote lifelong comics reading; comics as a means of creative expression for young people; and familiarizing educators and librarians with comics and their uses in schools and libraries.