Neumann will present its 2026 Bock Book Award to Nani and the Lion, written by Alicia D. Williams and illustrated by Anna Cunha, on November 4 at 10 a.m. in the Student Multipurpose Hall. Williams will join the ceremony via video call from her home in North Carolina.

Williams' book is about a girl who loves to play drums. Nani's music brings joy to her village, but a lion, king of the land, has outlawed noisemaking. The youngster must stand up to the biggest bully around, armed with only courage, quick thinking, and her music.

The Frances and Wesley Bock Book Award is given each year to a book that embodies Franciscan values in children's literature. The award benefactor provides a $750 prize to both the author and illustrator.

The criteria for the award, which is sponsored by the library and the Neumann Institute for Franciscan Studies, includes instilling a reverence and compassion for all creation and depicting creation in all of its diversity, in both the story and the illustrations.

Williams is the author of Mid-Air, which was longlisted for the National Book Award; Genesis Begins Again, which received Newbery and Kirkus Prize honors; and picture books Jump at the Sun and The Talk, which was a Coretta Scott King Honor book.

Cunha has illustrated more than twenty books, been nominated for the 2022 Kate Greenaway Medal, and won the AEILIJ Prize (awarded to writers and illustrators of children’s literature in Brazil) for her work.