2025 Sibert Honor Books: Call Me Roberto, The Girl Who Sang, The Enigma Girls, and Wings of an Eagle

This year’s Sibert honor books for excellence in nonfiction include two minority sports heroes, a very young Holocaust survivor, and a World War II espionage story.

Call Me Roberto! Roberto Clemente Goes to Bat for Latinos by Nathalie Alonso, illustrated by Rudy Gutierrez. Calkins Creek, 2024, 36 pages

Reading Level: Picture Book, ages 4-8

Recommended for: ages 6-10

When Roberto Clemente was growing up in Puerto Rico, he had only one ambition: to play Major League béisbol. As talented as he was, that ambition was likely to come about, but not without a struggle to be understood and recognized. After a season on the bench in Montreal, he was recruited into the Pittsburg Pirates in 1955, where he scored in his first game. “Many Pittsburg fans love Roberto’s bold style, but not everyone is quick to embrace a Black man from Puerto Rico who speaks español.” Despite his invaluable help in winning the 1960 World Series, he is overlooked as MVP and banned from his teammates’ lodging during spring training in Florida. But he persisted and achieved MVP status after the Pirates’ World Series win in 1966.

The author, a sports journalist, knows her baseball and the narrative is dramatic and well-paced. The illustrator draws on colorful Caribbean style elements and fluid motion to capture Roberto’s athleticism. Though his career was cut tragically short when he died in a plane crash, Roberto Clemente blazed a trail for Latino baseball players who are some of the brightest lights of the game.

Bottom Line: An accessible and rousing introduction to a star player.  

 The Enigma Girls: How Ten Teenagers Broke Cyphers, Kept Secrets, and Helped Win World War II by Candice Fleming. Scholastic Focus, 2024, 384 pages

Reading Level: Teen, ages 12-15

Recommended for: ages 12-18

On a lovely late-summer day in 1939, the morning light over Poland darkened with hundred of planes embellished with the Nazi swastika, and the world changed forever. Soon Europe was gearing up for war, but as one nation after another fell to the German blitz, Great Britain found its back against the wall. Intelligence became as vital to the war effort as guns and manpower, as a hastily-assembled team of misfits and geniuses assembled at Bletchley Park to gather information and crack codes. As glamorous as it may seem in hindsight, code-breaking is tedious in the extreme, and the more difficult the code the more data needed to break it. That’s where the girls came in–hundreds of young women recruited to listen to Morse code coming over the airwaves, to operate the deciphering machines, and to try to determine what was significant and what wasn’t.

The allies had these listening stations all over the world, but Enigma Girls centers on Bletchley Park, where the Nazi’s fiendishly difficult Enigma code was finally mastered. By following the stories of a handful of these girls, who all emerge with distinctive personalities, the author presents a well-rounded picture of the tedium and the discomfort, as well as the drama, of this important story. With the number of main characters and the wealth of detail, a reader has to pay attention, but that effort will be rewarded. A wealth of photographs and information about codes and cyphers help to, not exactly simplify a complex story, but make it understandable.

Bottom Line: An absorbing history of a vital World War II accomplishment.

The Girl Who Sang: A Holocaust Memoir of Hope and Survival by Estelle Nadel, artwork by Sammy Savos. Roaring Brook Press, 2024, 245 pages

Reading Level: Middle Grades, ages 8-10

Recommended for: ages 8-12

Enia Feld’s family was poor but content in their corner of rural Poland. They had all they needed and father Reuven often reminded the family of God’s protection. Enia was much younger than her three brothers and sisters, but being the baby had its advantages. She was everyone’s pet who liked to make up songs about the world around her, “And I thought we would be this happy forever.” But that was 1939, and Poland would soon be the worst place in the world for a Jewish family.

Enia (now known as Estelle) survived the Holocaust through the kindness of Gentile neighbors who hid her in attics and barns—five years of seldom venturing outside, enjoying the warmth of the sun, or eating anything like a full meal. Her family was picked off one by one: worked and starved to death, kidnapped, or captured and shot. Only two brothers survived, to eventually travel to the USA with their little sister and establish lives there.

The graphic-novel style is simple but emotionally effective as the palette shifts from sunny blues and yellows to grim grays and browns. Readers will get a sense of endless waiting as the years drag on and Enia’s singing voice is stilled. What became of her father’s faith that God would take care of them? That’s one of world history’s greatest conundrums, never addressed in the text. Many Holocaust memoirs exists; this one communicates the tragedy without becoming too heavy, falling somewhere between Hidden: A Child’s Story of the Holocaust and Diary of a Young Girl in its appropriateness for children.

NOTE: The Girl Who Sang is the winner of the 2025 Sidney Taylor award for excellence in Jewish literature.

Bottom Line: An effective and affective addition to Holocaust literature.

Wings of an Eagle: The Gold Medal Dreams of Billy Mills by Billy Mills and Donna Janell Bowman, illustrated by S.D. Wilson. Little, Brown, 2024, 42 pages.

Reading Level: Picture Book, ages 4-8

Recommended for: ages 6-10

Life on the South Dakota Lakota reservation was spare, though warmed by extended family. But young Billy Mills was devastated by the death of his mother when he was only nine. His father counseled, “The pursuit of a dream will heal you. Do this and you could have wing of an eagle.” Comforting words, but while Billy was still in his early teens his father also passed away. The boy lost himself in sports and odd jobs, with track emerging as the most promising outlet for his energies. Obstacles kept intruding—health issues, poverty, and prejudice—but Billy ran through his high school years at the Haskell Institute in Topeka, Kansas, and made the track team at the University of Kansas. By then a dream had taken shape: to run the 10,000 meter run in the Olympics. By 1964, he had his chance.

The illustrations incorporate Native American motifs into stylistic figures in soft-toned colors. Eagles are a recurring theme, not surprisingly, finally soaring as Billy Mills, against all odds, pulls off a win in the 10,000 meter. An extended appendix details Mills’ post-Olympic work with the charity he founded, Running Strong for American Indian Youth.

Bottom Line: an inspiring life story with a strong cultural flavor.

Also at Redeemed Reader:

Reviews: See our roundup of Sibert honor books from 2019 and 2022.

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Order Call Me Roberto!, The Girl Who Sang, Enigma Girls, and Wings of an Eagle from Amazon.