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From
Bank Street College of Education: Reuel Jordan, Dean,
School for Children, President Augusta Kappner &
Alice Belgray, Head, Children’s
Book Committee |
Children’s Book Committee at Bank Street College of
Education Celebrates 2004
By Joan Baum, Ph.D.
Noting that the annual
Bank Street College Children’s
book awards are “unique” for having the “most
diverse committee of judges”—a wide distribution
of professional and lay members and representation from all
age groups, including young reviewers, ages 2-14—Bank
Street College president Dr. Augusta Souza Kappner also pointed
out that the committee’s 600 selections, culled from
approximately 4,000 submissions, were already included in Bank
Street’s Best Children’s Books of the Year, a highly
revered annual guide. Of course, the five winners in the competition
categories of fiction, nonfiction and poetry—authors
and illustrators—were
the reason for the awards presentation and recipients were
particularly eloquent this year in talking about their hopes
for children’s literature and for advancing
the cause of literacy nation wide. President Kappner, a grandmother,
also noted that the six-year old love of her life delights
in reading and expressed the hope that her granddaughter’s “sense
of wonder” could be encouraged in all readers, the
earlier the better.
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Walter
Dean Myers speaks about his poetry with
Bank Street children |
Reuel Jordan, Bank
Street Dean of the School for Children also welcomed attendees
and paid homage to the 60,000-book Bank Street library which,
he said, was a “haven” for him, as
well as for faculty, alumni and guests. Although each year is
special, this one, he declared, was particularly so, given the
across-the-board theme of courage and heroism that could be found
in each winning work. The top prize for nonfiction for ages 6-9,
for example, confronts the challenge of maintaining culture in
the face of war. The Librarian of Basra: A True Story from
Iraq (Harcourt), written
and illustrated by Jeanette Winter, beautifully realizes
the promise of the Flora Stieglitz Straus award to celebrate “a
distinguished work of nonfiction which fulfills humanitarian
ideals and serves as an inspiration to young people.” The
story of a librarian who ingeniously saves precious books after
her library is destroyed, the book answers the implicit question
of how tragedy can be presented to young children. The answer
here was to concentrate not on the war but on the efforts of
the librarian, Alia. The nonfiction award for older readers,
ages 12-14 was won by Phillip Hoose whose The Race
to Save the Lord God Bird (Farrar,
Straus and Giroux) proves that a fine scholar (who is
also a performer and composer) can write a moving tale
accessible to youngsters. Following the ivory-billed
woodpecker for over 30 years, Hoose who hails from Maine,
created an exciting tale of the history of the bird and
of the scientists who tried to keep it from extinction.
The 2004 Claudia Lewis Award
for Poetry was shared. The award, honoring the late Bank Street
faculty member who served on the book committee, was presented
to Walter Dean Myers for Here in Harlem:
Poems in Many Voices (Holiday House). Accepting his certificate, Myers spoke
of how as a child, curious but shy, he was a “secret
reader,” but he always listened to others, and he
came to believe that his calling was “to give voice
to those who don’t have one or are reluctant to speak.” That
he has done so in the 54 voices recreated in his book is
obvious. In Hummingbird Nest: A Journal
of Poems,
with gorgeous illustrations by Barry Moser (Tricycle Press),
Kristine O’Connell George, who leads poetry workshops
in schools, tells, with a sense of wonder, of what she
observed from her California home—the making of a
nest and the fledging flights of the newborn—from
the point of view of all the members of her family, including
her beloved dog and cat.
The Josette
Frank Award for fiction this year went to Ida
B: and Her Plans to Maximize Fun, Avoid Disaster, and
(Possibly) Save the World by Katherine Hannigan (Greenwillow). Dedicated
to honor works of “outstanding literary
merit in which children or young people deal in a positive
and realistic way with difficulties in their world and
grow emotionally and morally,” the award could have
been given to the title alone, were it not that the story
itself movingly and sometimes fiercely reflects Ida—and
the author’s—growth in overcoming shyness and
a private sense of self and in learning that trying is
more important than achieving.
The book committee
awards, under the aegis and expertise of committee president
Alice Belgray, always an SRO affair, are truly one of
the city’s most treasured tributes
to literacy.#
For further info: see www.bankstreet.edu/bookcom/awards.html