Friends of Children and Literature
Los Angeles Public Library Children's Literature Department
The FOCAL Award
The FOCAL Award was instituted by founding member Janet McOuat. The Award is presented annually to a work that enriches a child’s knowledge and understanding of California and its history. In order to receive the Award, a book must be of the highest literary and artistic quality, and must exhibit California content. It must also be interesting and appealing to children of the book’s target age level. Generally, the Awards Committee chooses from books published within the past five years, and the book must still be in print. The first FOCAL Award was given in 1980 to Pedro, the Angel of Olvera Street by author and illustrator Leo Politi, whose charming illustration of reading children was designed especially for FOCAL, and became the FOCAL logo.
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The Award, which is a unique hand-crafted puppet representing a character from the winning book, is presented to the author of that book. The unique puppets, which are on display in the Children’s Literature Department of Central Library, were created by Carol Onofrio each year from 1980 – 2014. Since then the puppets have been created by Jesse Kingsley and Moira MacDonald.
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The FOCAL Award committee is comprised of a Chair, five voting members, and two non-voting members, including the FOCAL president and former committee chairperson. Each member serves a two-year term.
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TheSpring 2026 FOCAL Award winner is...
Simone
words by Viet Thanh Nguyen & art by Minnie Phan
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen and illustrator Minnie Phan created an unforgettable story of a Vietnamese-American girl whose life is transformed by a wildfire.
Simone, a budding young artist, is awakened by her mom as a wildfire threatens their home, and this is the beginning of a life-changing journey. While in a nearby shelter, Simone finds a way to deal with the situation by encouraging the children she meets there to draw. After she and her mom are able to return to their home a few days later, Simone and a new friend keep creating art, and realize that they can be firefighters too, but in a newand unique way that can help their community and our planet.