Roxanna Asgarian's 'We Were Once a Family' and Amanda Peters' 'The Berry Pickers' win library medals

Loving libraries is not a requirement for receiving an Andrew Carnegie Medal from the American Library Association

NEW YORK -- In the childhood home of author Roxanna Asgarian, there were restrictions on how often the television could be on and which programs could be watched.

Books were placed under a much looser set of rules.

“Mom would take us to the library and gave us totally free reign,” says Asgarian, a Las Vegas native who is now a freelance journalist in Dallas. She is one of this year's winners of an Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence, presented by the American Library Association.

“There were no limits and that was very helpful to me because I could follow my interests; I read Roald Dahl's books, one by one. I think when it comes to books and readings you have to be able to find what's interesting to you and pursue that. It helps you come to a love of reading. ”

On Saturday, the library association announced that Asgarian had won the nonfiction medal for “We Were Once A Family: Love, Death, and Child Removal in America,” her investigation into the Hart family murder-suicide from 2018, when a couple drove off a cliff with their six adopted children in the back. The fiction medal was awarded to Amanda Peters for her novel “The Berry Pickers,” a multi-generational story centered around the disappearance of a young Mi’kmaq girl from a blueberry field in Maine.