Okorafor received a 2001 Hurston-Wright literary award for her story "Amphibious Green." She then published two books for young adults, "The Shadow Speaker" (Hyperion/Disney Book Group) and "Zahrah the Windseeker" (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). "Zahrah" won the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa. "The Shadow Speaker" was a winner of the Carl Brandon Parallax Award, a Booksense Pick for Winter 2007/2008, a Tiptree Honor Book, Okorafor's children's book "Long Juju Man" was the 2007–08 winner of the Macmillan Writer's Prize for Africa.