The State of Kansas Notable Book Awards are presented annually for fifteen notable books created by writers, illustrators or book artists who are Kansans and/or have written about Kansas. The award, originally established in 2006, is organized by the Kansas Center for the Book (KCFB).
Winning authors include Clare Vanderpool, Rolf Potts, Ben Lerner, Candice Millard, and Gordon Parks.
The KCFB is a state affiliate of the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress. It is a program of the State Library of Kansas.
A committee of KCFB affiliates and fellows, together with authors of previous Notable Books, identifies notable titles from among those published the previous year, and the State Librarian makes the selection for the final list of fifteen. A reception and medal awards ceremony are held to honor the books and their authors and illustrators.
Following are the Kansas Notable Book Award winners, listed in alphabetical order by title:
Biting Through the Skin: An Indian Kitchen in America's Heartland – Nina Mukerjee Furstenau
The Black Country – Alex Grecian
Bleeding Kansas, Bleeding Missouri: The Long Civil War on the Border – Jonathan Earle & Diane Mutti Burke, Eds.
A Death at Crooked Creek: The Case of the Cowboy, the Cigarmaker, and the Love Letter – Marianne Wesson
Dragging Wyatt Earp: A Personal History of Dodge City – Robert Rebein
Echoes from the Prairie: A Collection of Short Memoirs – Nicole Muchmore, Ed.
Edmund G. Ross: Soldier, Senator, Abolitionist – Richard A. Ruddy
The Good Lord Bird – James McBride
Navigating Early – Clare Vanderpool
Needle in the Bone – Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg
Of Grave Concern: An Ophelia Wylde Paranormal Mystery – Max McCoy
Teatime to Tailgates: 150 Years at the K-State Table – Jane P. Marshall
The Thing About Luck – Cynthia Kadohata
The Tie That Bound Us: The Women of John Brown’s Family – Bonnie Laughlin-Schultz
Worth the Pain: How Meningitis Nearly Killed Me - Then Changed My Life for the Better – Andy Marso
The Adventures of Beanboy – Lisa Harkrader
Beyond Cold Blood: The KBI from Ma Barker to BTK – Larry Welch
Blackbear Bosin: Keeper of the Indian Spirit – David Simmonds
The Chaperone – Laura Moriarty
The Dust Bowl: An Illustrated History – Dayton Duncan & Ken Burns
Eisenhower in War and Peace – Jean Edward Smith
Frontier Manhattan: Yankee Settlement to Kansas Town, 1854–1894 – Kevin G. W. Olson
A Kansas Bestiary – Jake Vail & Doug Hitt, and illustrated by Lisa Grossman
May B. – Caroline Starr Rose
This Ecstasy They Call Damnation – Israel Wasserstein
Time's Shadow: Remembering a Family Farm in Kansas – Arnold J. Bauer
To the Stars Through Difficulties: A Kansas Renga in 150 Voices – Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Ed.
A Voice for Kanzas – Debra McArthur
Wide Open – Larry Bjornson
The Yard – Alex Grecian
8 Wonders of Kansas! – Marci Penner
The Afterlives of Trees – Wyatt Townley
Amelia Lost: The Life and Disappearance of Amelia Earhart – Candace Fleming
Bent Road – Lori Roy
Destiny of the Republic: a Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President – Candice Millard
Doc – Mary Doria Russell
The Door in the Forest – Roderick Townley
Liar's Moon – Elizabeth C. Bunce
My Ruby Slippers: The Road Back to Kansas – Tracy Seeley
The Northern Cheyenne Exodus in History and Memory – Ramon Powers & James N. Leiker
Osa and Martin: For the Love of Adventure – Kelly Enright
Prairie Fire: A Great Plains History – Julie Courtwright
Rode – Thomas Fox Averill
Send Me Work: Stories – Katherine Karlin
Tapped Out: Rear Naked Chokes, the Octagon, and the Last Emperor: an Odyssey in Mixed Martial Arts – Matthew Polly
Amy Barickman's Vintage Notions – Amy Barickman
And Hell Followed With It – Bonar Menninger
Appetite for America – Stephen Fried
Baking With Friends – Sharon Davis & Charlene Patton
Bound – Antonya Nelson
Crossing the Tracks – Barbara Stuber
A Distant Home – George Paris
Flyover People – Cheryl Unruh
Ghost Stories of the New West – Denise Low
Life in a Jar – Jack Mayer
Moon Over Manifest – Clare Vanderpool
A Prairie Peter Pan – Beverley O. Buller
Prairie Rhythms – Lana Wirt Myers
The Scent of Rain and Lightning – Nancy Pickard
Star Crossed – Elizabeth C. Bunce
Addie of the Flint Hills: A Prairie Child During the Depression – Adaline Sorace, as told to Deborah Sorace Prutzman
The Blue Shoe: A Tale of Thievery, Villainy, Sorcery, and Shoes – Roderick Townley, and illustrated by Mary GrandPre
Carter Finally Gets It – Brent Crawford
The Evolution of Shadows – Jason Quinn Malott
Ghost Town – Richard W. Jennings
A Kansas Year – Mike Blair
Lisa's Flying Electric Piano – Kevin Rabas
Nothing Right: Short Stories – Antonya Nelson
One Kansas Farmer: A Kansas Number Book – Devin Scillian & Corey Scillian
Our Boys: A Perfect Season on the Plains with the Smith Center Redmen – Joe Drape
Silver Shoes – Paul Miles Schneider
The Storm in the Barn – written and illustrated by Matt Phelan
To the Stars: Kansas Poets of the Ad Astra Poetry Project – Denise Low, Ed.
Under Siege!: Three Children at the Civil War Battle for Vicksburg – Andrea Warren
Years of Dust: The Story of the Dust Bowl – Albert Marrin
Amelia Earhart: the Legend of the Lost Aviator – Shelley Tanaka, and illustrated by David Craig
Artfully Done Across Generations – RoxAnn Banks Dicker, Ed.
Burn – Kathleen Johnson
Charlatan: America's Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam – Pope Brock
A Curse Dark as Gold – Elizabeth C. Bunce
The Guide to Kansas Birds and Birding Hot Spots – Bob Gress & Pete Janzen
Hometown Appetites: The Story of Clementine Paddleford, the Forgotten Food Writer Who Chronicled How America Ate – Kelly Alexander & Cynthia Harris
Kansas Opera Houses: Actors and Community Events 1855–1925 – Jane Glotfelty Rhoads
Making History: Quilts & Fabric From 1890–1970 – Barbara Brackman
Marco Polo Didn't Go There: Stories and Revelations From One Decade as a Postmodern Travel Writer – Rolf Potts
The Nature of Kansas Lands – Beverley Worster, Ed.
A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir – Donald Worster
The Pizza Hut Story – Robert Spector
Seeding Civil War: Kansas in the National News, 1854–1858 – Craig Miner
Survival of Rural America: Small Victories and Bitter Harvests – Richard E. Wood
American Shaolin: Flying Kicks, Buddhist Monks, and the Legend of Iron Crotch: An Odyssey in the New China – Matthew Polly
The Boy Who Was Raised by Librarians – illustrated by Brad Sneed
Can I Keep My Jersey? 11 Teams, 5 Countries, and 4 Years in My Life as a Basketball Vagabond – Paul Shirley
The Curse of Catunkhamun – Tim Raglin
The Farther Shore – Matthew Eck
From Emporia: The Story of William Allen White – Beverley O. Buller
Hellfire Canyon – Max McCoy
Hunger for the Wild: America's Obsession with the Untamed West – Michael L. Johnson
The Kitchen Sink: New and Selected Poems, 1972–2007 – Albert Goldbarth
A Matter of Justice: Eisenhower and the Beginning of the Civil Rights Revolution – David A. Nichols
The Middle of Somewhere – J.B. Cheaney
The Rest of Her Life – Laura Moriarty
Sea Monsters: Prehistoric Creatures of the Deep – Michael J. Everhart
Storm Chaser: A Photographer's Journey – Jim Reed
Writing in an Age of Silence – Sara Paretsky
Eighteen notable books were selected in 2007, the only year in which it was not a list of fifteen.
Afoot: A Tale of the Great Dakota Turkey Drive – George Brandsberg
Angle of Yaw – Ben Lerner
Ballots and Bullets: The Bloody County Seat Wars of Kansas – Robert K. DeArment
Flint Hills Cowboys: Tales From the Tallgrass Prairie – James Hoy
I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have To Kill You – Ally Carter
John Brown to Bob Dole: Movers and Shakers in Kansas – Virgil Dean, Ed.
John Steuart Curry: The Road Home – Alice Bertels
Kansas Murals: A Traveler's Guide – Lora Jost & Dave Loewenstein
Light on Main Street: Storytelling by a Country Newspaper Editor – Rudy Taylor
The Loose Change of Wonder – Steven Hind
My Little Yellow Taxi – Stephen Johnson
Next Year Country: Dust to Dust in Western Kansas, 1890–1940 – Craig Miner
Not Afraid of Dogs – Susanna Pitzer
Ogallala Blue: Water and Life on the High Plains – William Ashworth
Revolutionary Heart: The Life of Clarina Nichols and the Pioneering Crusade for Women's Rights – Diane Eickhoff
Shanghai Shadows – Lois Ruby
The Virgin of Small Plains – Nancy Pickard
Words of a Prairie Alchemist – Denise Low
Airball: My Life in Briefs – L.D. Harkrader
Capote in Kansas: A Drawn Novel – Ande Parks
The Darkest Dawn: Lincoln, Booth, and the Great American Tragedy – Thomas Goodrich
Deputy Harvey and the Ant Cow Caper – Brad Sneed
The Great Blues – Steve Semken
A Hungry Heart: A Memoir – Gordon Parks
In the Small, Small Night – Jane Kurtz
John Brown, Abolitionist – David S. Reynolds
The Kansas Guidebook for Explorers – Marci Penner
Maggie Rose and Sass – Eunice Boeve
The Moon Butter Route – Max Yoho
Oceans of Kansas: A Natural History of the Western Interior Sea – Michael J. Everhart
Ordinary Genius – Thomas Fox Averill
Wildflowers and Grasses of Kansas: A Field Guide – Michael John Haddock
The Youngest Brother: On a Kansas Wheat Farm During the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression – C. Hugh Snyder
