FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                     

Contact: Linda B. Belle, Executive Director

April 28, 2004                                               

2004 JANE ADDAMS AWARDS ARE ANNOUNCED

Winners of the 2004 Jane Addams Children's Book Awards were announced on April 28, 2004 by the Jane Addams Peace Association (JAPA). Organized on that date in 1915, JAPA funds much of the educational work of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.

Since 1953, the Jane Addams Children's Book Awards annually acknowledge books published during the previous year in the U.S.  Books chosen for the Awards effectively address themes or topics that promote peace, social 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 Picture Book category is Harvesting Hope: The Story of Cesar Chavez, written by Kathleen Krull, illustrated by Yuyi Morales, and published by Harcourt Children's Books. Through engaging narrative and culturally-expressive paintings, Chavez's life is traced from his comfortable Arizona farm childhood through drought, loss, and backbreaking field labor to his adult leadership in organizing migrant workers. The hardships of a grape boycott and a 340-mile protest march led by Chavez result in the 1965 contract for farmworkers, the first in the nation.

In the category of Books for Older Children, the winner is Out of Bounds: Seven Stories of Conflict and Hope.  South African apartheid and its aftermath are experienced and challenged, decade by decade, by young, courageous protagonists whose portrayals cross races, classes, and genders.  These incisive stories were written by once-exiled South African Beverley Naidoo and published by HarperCollins Children's Books.

In the Picture Book category, both Honor Books are biographical portraits of determined and resourceful women, yet the books are wholly different in setting, era, situation, and tone.  Girl Wonder: A Baseball Story in Nine Innings was inspired by the accomplishments of Alta Weiss, a girl with an arm, who at 17 in early 20^th century Ohio, pitched her way onto an all-male baseball team and won.  The upbeat words by Deborah Hopkinson and the brightly bold pictures by Terry Widener are published by Atheneum Books for Young Readers, An Anne Schwartz Book.

The second honored Picture Book is set within a German concentration camp and tells the true story of a heroic woman who secretly saves the lives of 54 orphaned and imprisoned children.  In Luba: The Angel of Bergen-Belsen, author Michelle R. McCann movingly recounts the horrific story of danger, suffering, and courage told to her by Luba Tryszynska-Frederick.  Accomplished oil paintings by Ann Marshall illustrate this Tricycle Press book.

In the category of Honor Books for Older Children, two books were named: Getting Away with Murder: The True Story of the Emmett Till Case by Chris Crowe and Shutting Out the Sky: Life in the Tenements of New York 1880-1924 by Deborah Hopkinson.

Crowe uses telling photographs and meticulously-researched text to rehearse the grisly and shameful 1955 lynching of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African-American boy from Chicago.  Till was murdered during a summer visit to Money, Mississippi; his killers were acquitted.  This almost-forgotten episode of U.S. history was published by Phyllis Fogelman Books/Penguin Books for Young Readers.

Carefully-selected archival photos and thorough scholarship are again important elements of the other honor book, Shutting Out the Sky.  It depicts the lives of five people who immigrated as children around 1900, following  them from their early tenement lives in New York City to their eventual hard-won status as naturalized United States citizens.  This lively chronicle of immigrant life was published by Orchard Books, an imprint of Scholastic, Inc. 

This year a Special Commendation is being awarded to The Breadwinner Trilogy, three books by Deborah Ellis, published by Groundwood Books/Douglas & McIntyre.  The Breadwinner, Parvana's Journey, and Mud City are connected realistic novels of children in contemporary Afghanistan, orphaned and displaced by war.  As refugees in their own ravaged country, the courageous protagonist in each story displays her own special enterprise and perseverance.

The 2004 Jane Addams Children's Book Awards will be presented on Friday, October 22 in New York City.

Details about securing award and honor book seals and about the award event 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 japa@igc.org 

For additional information about the Jane Addams Children's Book Awards and a complete list of books honored since 1953, see janeaddamspeace.org.

Members of the 2004 Jane Addams Children's Book Awards Committee are Donna Barkman, Chair (Ossining, New York); Marilyn Hurley Bimstein (Seattle, Washington); Eliza T. Dresang (Tallahassee, Florida); Susan C. Griffith (Mt. Pleasant, MI); Ginny Moore Kruse, (Madison, Wisconsin); JoAnn Montie (Minneapolis, MN); Cathie Reed (New Market, Maryland); Suzanne Martell (Harwich, Massachusetts); and Pat Wiser (Sewanee, Tennessee). Regional reading and discussion groups participated with many of the committee members throughout the jury's evaluation and selection process.

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 more information about the Jane Addams Peace Association, visit www.janeaddamspeace.org  For information about WILPF during its 89^th year, visit www.wilpf.int.ch/

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