Two stories about Vermont boys and their dogs by Vermont authors are among the most distinguished literature for young people published in 2023, the American Library Association announced Monday.

M.T. Anderson’s middle grade novel Elf Dog and Owl Head has been named one of five Newbery Honor books while Ken Cadow’s debut novel, Gather, is among six Printz Honor books. In addition, Anderson’s short story “Sweet Everlasting” is part of the collection that won the Michael L. Printz Award for excellence in literature written for young adults. That book, The Collectors: Stories, was edited by A.S. King.

The John Newbery Medal for the most outstanding contribution to children’s literature went to Dave Eggers for The Eyes & the Impossible.

Speaking to Seven Days on Tuesday, Anderson said adults may be reluctant to admit that animals become part of their families. “I feel like it’s important to say these relationships are real, they’re important, and they’re beautiful.” Elf Dog and Owl Head, he continued, is “a dog book that ends happily, which was important to me because so many dog books somehow have to end with the death of the animal.”

The book, a fantasy tale about a boy named Clay trapped alone in Vermont during the pandemic with no real companion but a magical dog, was inspired by Anderson’s own experience, holed up in his 18th-century East Calais home alone with his rescue mutt, LaRue. Despite a cancer diagnosis expected to kill her in a matter of days, LaRue survived.

“It was like I’d had a miraculous dispensation, the dog allowed to live so she and I could be together in this time of isolation,” Anderson wrote in an essay for School Library Journal. “So I started to write a book, full of thanks and the joy of companionship.” His fictional dog Elphinore, from the Kingdom Under the Mountain, shows Clay how to travel between worlds. Together, the pair discover the secrets of the forests around them.

A New York Times bestselling author, Anderson won the National Book Award in 2006 for The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume 1: The Pox Party. He was a National Book Award finalist two other times — for Feed in 2002 and for The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge in 2018 — and Feed is listed in Time magazine’s Best 100 Young Adult Books of All Time. Still, winning the Newbery Honor is a “beautiful moment,” he said. “It makes you part of a whole legacy of children’s literature that I myself loved when I was a kid.”

Cadow, featured in a Seven Days cover story in November, is coprincipal of Oxbow High School in Bradford. He wrote much of his novel during predawn hours in the tiny cabin he built on the wooded hill behind his Norwich home. His email inboxes exploded after the Printz honor was announced. “I’m just wowed and kind of teary,” he told Seven Days on Tuesday.

Informed by the insights and empathy cultivated through 20 years of working with middle and high school students in rural Vermont, Gather tells the story of a Vermont teen named Ian, who meets hardship with grit, humor, resilience and the unflinching companionship of a huge Irish wolfhound-mastiff mix named Gather.

“It’s wonderful to be recognized, and to find out that I’ve told a story that I think desperately needed to be told,” Cadow said. He hopes the book sparks empathy and conversation about class, people with drug addictions and what Cadow calls “rural smarts.”

“It still feels OK to poke fun at a rural mentality … and I want it to not be OK,” he said. Despite its hardships, the country is beautiful and where Ian sees himself belonging. “I hope that this gets into the hands of more urban kids to develop more empathy.”

Despite the ongoing accolades from the publishing world, Cadow said he still loves his day job. “There’s nothing like having a real time conversation with a real kid.”