Jane Addiction

Award news. It happens.

This week (which is to say, last week) the Jane Addams Children's Book Awards were announced. Who didn't win? Well, uh... howzabout Jane Addams: Champion of Democracy? That was a really good book last year and it got just about zippo attention.

I do wonder if they actively avoided allowing the Jane Addams book to win. In any case, here's the official announcement thingy:

JANE ADDAMS CHILDREN'S BOOK AWARDS ANNOUNCED
April 27, 2007….Winners of the 2007 Jane Addams Children's Book Awards were announced today by the Jane Addams Peace Association.

A Place Where Sunflowers Grow, written by Amy-Lee Tai, illustrated by Felicia Hoshino and published by Children's Book Press is the winner in the Books for Younger Children category.

Weedflower by Cynthia Kadohata and published by Atheneum Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing, is the winner in the Books for Older Children category. Both books draw on personal family history to create stories about Japanese-American girls living in internment camps in the United States during World War II.

Two books have won honors in the Books for Younger Children Category.

Crossing Bok Chitto: A Choctaw Tale of Friendship & Freedom , is written by Tim Tingle, illustrated by Jeanne Rorex Bridges and published by Cinco Puntos Press. The Choctaw people live on one side of the river Bok Chitto; plantation owners and African American slaves live on the other. A secret friendship between a Choctaw girl and an African-American boy is the first link in a chain of humanity that spirits the boy's family across the river to freedom. The folk tale is a tribute to the Choctaws and Indians of every nation who aided African Americans running from slavery. Earth-tone paintings and striking use of white express the story's blend of reality and magic perfectly.

Night Boat to Freedom, is written by Margot Theis Raven, pictures by E. B. Lewis and published by Melanie Kroupa Books, an imprint of Farrar, Straus and Giroux. In danger and darkness, an enslaved African-American boy repeatedly risks his life to row others across the river to Ohio and freedom. Expressive watercolors use blues, grays and patches of red to convey the emotional landscape of this story etched from the oral histories of former slaves

Two books have won honors in the Books for Older Children category.

Freedom Walkers: The Story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, by Russell Freedman and published by Holiday House . With inspiring quotes, compelling photos and telling details, Freedman's well-documented account of the1955-56 Montgomery (AL) bus boycott brings the grass-roots, nonviolent nature of this movement to the fore. This story of ordinary African American citizens who "rose up in protest and united to demand their rights—by walking peacefully" demonstrates the power of passive resistance and collective action in challenging racism and injustice that shape daily life.

Counting on Grace, by Elizabeth Winthrop, published by Wendy Lamb Books, an imprint of Random House Children's Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Forced to leave school, a French-Canadian girl joins her family working in the mills of Vermont in the early 1900's. With the support of a local teacher and incognito
child-labor activist and photographer Lewis Hine, she sees the world beyond the
boundaries of the mill and realizes the power of literacy to effect change.

The 2007 Jane Addams Children's Book Awards will be presented Friday, October 19 th in New York City. Details about the award event and about securing winner and honor book seals are available from the Jane Addams Peace Association. Contact JAPA Executive Director Linda B. Belle, 777 United Nations Plaza, 6 th Floor, New York, NY 10017-3521; by phone 212-682-8830; and by e-mail mailto:japa@igc.org.