FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Linda B. Belle, Executive Director
April 28, 2005
Jane Addams Peace Association
777 United Nations Plaza, 6th Floor
New York, New York 10017-3521
212.682.8830; japa@igc.org
JANE ADDAMS AWARDS ARE ANNOUNCED
Winners of the 2005 Jane Addams Children's Book Awards were announced
on April 28 by the Jane Addams Peace Association (JAPA). Organized on that
date in 1915, JAPA is the educational arm of the Women's International League
for Peace and Freedom (WILPF).
Since 1953, the Jane Addams Children's Book Awards annually acknowledge books
published in the U.S. during the previous year. Books chosen for the Awards
effectively address themes or topics that promote peace, justice, world community,
and/or equality of the sexes and all races. The books must also meet conventional
standards of literary and artistic excellence.
The winner in the Books for Younger Children category is Sélavi,
That is Life: A Haitian Story of Hope, written and illustrated by
Youme Landowne, from Cinco Puntos Press. In this arresting story based
on real children, a homeless, nameless boy finds companions in the street
who together build a community of survival and a radio station that speaks
courage to struggling youth. Illustrations, skilled in their directness and
power, striking photographs, and an afterword by Edwidge Dandicat complete
this view of contemporary Haitian life.
In the category of Books for Older Children, the winner is With Courage
and Cloth: Winning the Fight for a Woman's Right to Vote, by Ann
Bausum, published by National Geographic Society. Attractively designed, With
Courage and Cloth focuses especially on the period of the woman suffrage movement
from 1913 to 1920, when the vote was finally won by determined suffragists.
Bausum frankly addresses, in text and graphic archival photographs, the controversies,
the failures and the triumphs that prove that it was, indeed, a fight. Impeccable
documentation completes the book.
Three books have won Honors in the Books for Younger Children category. Two
of them tell stories of children's rifts and their resolutions. A rhythmic,
poetic text by Karen English in Hot Day on Abbott Avenue
moves the story from a "best-friend-breakup day" to a "forgetting-what-you-were-mad-about
day" with sensitivity, humor, and a sense of community, reflected brilliantly
in the collage art of Javaka Steptoe. Clarion Books published this testimonial
to soothing influence of Double Dutch and blue ice-pops. Henry
and the Kite Dragon, by Bruce Edward Hall, is set in the Chinatown
of New York in the 1920s when kites and homing pigeons were roof-top hobbies
that, in this tale based on true events, set Chinese children and Italian
children on a collision course. With the help of Grandfather Chin, the flying
of both kites and pigeons happily resumes and both are depicted in the stunning
paintings of William Low in this book published by Philomel Books/Penguin
Young Readers Group. In a more serious tone, the third Honor Book details
the accomplishment of Sequoyah: The Cherokee Man Who Gave His People
Writing. With spare text and appealing illustrations by James Rumford
(and translation into Cherokee by Anna Sixkiller Huckaby), this tall, lean
volume echoes the wishes of Sequoyah who wanted his people "to stand
as tall as any people on earth" and helped them do so by resolutely creating
a syllabary with which their language could be recorded. The syllabary and
a chronology of Sequoyah are included in this biography published by Houghton
Mifflin Books for Children.
In the category of Honor Books for Older Children, Canadian author Deborah
Ellis has again been recognized for her book, The Heaven Shop,
published by Fitzhenry & Whiteside. Set in contemporary Malawi, the story
personalizes the devastation of the HIV/AIDS pandemic through the experiences
of one child, Binti, a 13-year-old girl with ambition and talent. After the
death of their parents, Binti and her two siblings are seized and separated,
to be used as servants by relatives. With the help of their impoverished and
indomitable grandmother, the children are reunited, older and wiser about
the effects of this murderous disease.
Members of the 2005 Jane Addams Children's Book Awards Committee are Donna
Barkman, Chair (Ossining, New York), Dionne Delancy (Brooklyn, New York),
Eliza T. Dresang (Tallahassee, Florida), Susan C. Griffith (Mt. Pleasant,
Michigan), Margaret Jensen (Madison, Wisconsin), Jo Montie (Minneapolis, MN),
Suzanne Martell (Harwich, Massachusetts), Deborah Taylor (Baltimore, Maryland),
Pat Wiser (Sewanee, Tennessee) and Lorrie Wright (Juneau, Alaska). Regional
reading and discussion groups participated with many of the committee members
throughout the jury's evaluation and selection process.
The 2005 Jane Addams Children's Book Awards will be presented on Friday, October
21st 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,
6th Floor, New York, NY 10017-3521; by phone 212-682-8830; and by e-mail japa@igc.org.
For additional information about the Jane Addams Children's Book Awards and
a complete list of books honored since 1953, see www.janeaddamspeace.org.
and, for a recent (March 2005) article about the awards, see www.ala.org/BookLinks.
In addition to the Jane Addams Children's Book Awards and its many other educational
projects, JAPA houses the U.N. office of the Women's International League
for Peace and Freedom in New York City. JAPA owns the Jane Addams House in
Philadelphia where the U.S. section of WILPF is located. For information about
WILPF during its 90th year, visit www.wilpf.int.ch.
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