 September 2004
American Friends Service Committee Peacework Magazine Sara Burke, Managing Editor Sam Diener, Editor Pat Farren, Founding Editor 2161 Massachusetts Ave. Telephone number: Fax number:
pwork@igc.org Peacework has been published monthly since 1972, intended to serve as a source of dependable information to those who strive for peace and justice and are committed to furthering the nonviolent social change necessary to achieve them. Rooted in Quaker values and informed by AFSC experience and initiatives, Peacework offers a forum for organizers, fostering coalition-building and teaching the methods and strategies that work in the global and local community. Peacework seeks to serve as an incubator for social transformation, introducing a younger generation to a deeper analysis of problems and issues, reminding and re-inspiring long-term activists, encouraging the generations to listen to each other, and creating space for the voices of the disenfranchised. Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC. |
The Jane Addams Book Awards
The Jane Addams Peace Association
(JAPA) announced the 51st annual Jane Addams Children's Book Awards
on April 28, 2004. JAPA funds much of the educational work of
the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. The Jane
Addams Awards recognize books published during the previous year
in the US that effectively address themes or topics that promote
peace, social justice, world community, and/or equality of the
sexes and all races while also embodying literary and artistic
excellence. Children's Picture Book Award Winner Harvesting Hope: The Story of Cesar Chavez. By Kathleen Krull, illustrated by Yuyi Morales; (Harcourt Children's Books).
Through engaging narrative and expressive
paintings, United Farm Workers leader Cesar Chavez's life is chronicled
in this book. The book depicts his childhood, defined by drought,
loss, and backbreaking field labor on an Arizona farm. These experiences
provided the motivation and the background for his adult leadership
organizing migrant workers. The book culminates with Chavez' leadership
of a grape boycott and the 340 mile protest march which led to
the first union contract for farm workers in the nation. Honor Picture Books Girl Wonder: A Baseball Story in Nine Innings. By Deborah Hopkins, illustrated by Terry Widener. (Atheneum Books for Young Readers, An Anne Schwartz Book) Luba: The Angel of Bergen-Belsen. By Michelle R. McCann, illustrated by Ann Marshall. (Tricycle Press) 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 was inspired by the accomplishments of Alta Weiss, a 17 year old girl with an "arm" in early 20th century Ohio, who pitched her way onto an all-male baseball team -- and won everyone's respect.
The second honored picture book is set in
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, author Michelle R. McCann movingly recounts
the horrific story of danger, suffering, and courage told to her
by Luba Tryszynska-Frederick. Books for Older Children Award Winner Out of Bounds: Seven Stories of Conflict and Hope. By Beverly Naidoo. (Harper Collins Children's Books)
Written by once-exiled South African Beverly
Naidoo, these incisive stories outline South African apartheid
and its aftermath as experienced and challenged, decade by decade,
by young, courageous protagonists whose portrayals cross races,
classes, and genders.
Honor Books for Getting Away with Murder: The True Story of the Emmett Till Case. By Chris Crowe. (Phyllis Fogelman Books/ Penguin Books For Young Readers) Crowe uses telling photographs and meticulously-researched text to retell the grisly and shameful 1955 lynching of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African-American boy from Chicago. During a summer visit to Money, Mississippi, Till was brutally murdered by two white men for speaking to a white woman. The case generated international attention because of the brutality of the murder, the open casket funeral his mother held to show the world "what they did to my boy," and the acquittal, despite indisputable evidence, of Emmett's killers by a jury composed of 12 white males. Although Emmett was one of thousands murdered by racism, his case was a turning point in the US Civil Rights movement and the fight against white impunity. Shutting Out the Sky: Life in the Tenements of New York 1880-1924. By Deborah Hopkinson. (Orchard Books, an imprint of Scholastic, Inc.)
Carefully selected archival photos and thorough
scholarship are also important elements of the other honor book,
Shutting Out the Sky, a lively chronicle of immigrant life.
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. Special Commendation The Bread Winner Trilogy: The Breadwinner, Parvana's Journey, and Mud City. By Deborah Ellis. (Groundwood Books/Douglas & McIntyre)
The Breadwinner Trilogy
are realistic novels of children, orphaned and displaced by war,
in contemporary Afghanistan. As refugees in their own ravaged
country, the courageous protagonist in each story displays her
own special enterprise and perseverance. The Jane Addams Children's Book Awards will be presented on Friday, October 22 in New York City. For details about the awards and the celebratory ceremony, please contact the Jane Addams Peace Association, 777 United Nations Plaza, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10017-3521, phone 212-682-8830; japa@igc.org www.janeaddamspeace.org.
The website also contains the complete list
of books honored since 1953. Coretta Scott King Book Awards In 1969, while attending the American Library Association Meeting, Mabel McKissick and Glyndon Greer, two school librarians, had a chance meeting at a booth when both were trying to get a poster of Martin Luther King Jr. They lamented the fact that African-American authors and illustrators had not been recognized with awards. John Carroll, publisher at the booth, asked why they didn't create such an award. From that seed, the Coretta Scott King Award was born. It was first awarded in 1970.
Angela Johnson won
the 2004 author award for The First Part Last (Simon
& Schuster), a novel about a father struggling to raise an
infant. To learn more, visit www.ala.org/ala/srrt/corettascottking/winners/corettascott.htm.
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