Coretta Scott King Award 2010

How the Horn Book reviewed the winners

Vaunda Micheaux Nelson  Bad News for Outlaws: The Remarkable Life of Bass Reeves, Deputy U.S. Marshal; illus. by R. Gregory Christie
      Carolrhoda
      Reviewed 11/09
Bass Reeves’s life is the stuff from which legends are made. Born a slave, he escaped to Indian Territory (now known as Oklahoma), captured over three thousand men and women as a deputy U.S. marshal, and spent his few years of retirement on a small-town police force. Reeves, as a fellow sharpshooter once said, “could shoot the left hind leg off a contented fly sitting on a mule’s ear at a hundred yards and never ruffle a hair,” and was a man of such honor that he arrested his own son for murder. This captivating biography, told in language as colorful as Reeves’s career, grabs readers with an 1884 gunfight, then flashes back to Reeves’s early life and continues until his death. Section headings (“Slave Days, 1840s–1860s”; “Freedom and Family, Late 1860s–1874”) underscore the chronology, while boldfaced subheadings provide a textbook lesson on how topic sentences work. Typically, the subheadings offer an opinion (“Bass was respected, and he was hated”) followed by a paragraph or two of supporting information. Accentuated with a palette knife, Christie’s sharply textured paintings create an impressionist background of an unformed land as well as detailed portraits of this multi-dimensional individual, his bold black hat conveying unmistakable authority. Includes documentation, a glossary, a timeline, recommended readings and bibliography, and historical author notes. B.C.

Langston Hughes  My People; photographs by Charles R. Smith Jr.
      Seo/Atheneum
      Reviewed fall 2009
Reflecting Hughes’s powerful words, Smith’s sepia-tone photographs depict African Americans across generations. Aged, toil-worn hands represent the past, a mother with child holds onto the present, and hopeful youths look ahead into the future. Text and visuals seamlessly acclaim: “Beautiful, also, are the souls of my people.” Poetry for all ages and peoples. HMS

Tanita S. Davis  Mare’s War
      Knopf
      Reviewed fall 2009
Octavia and Talitha think they know all about their unconventional grandmother, Mare. However, a cross-country road trip reveals some surprises. In alternating chapters, Octavia narrates the present and Mare recounts her adventures in the Women’s Army Corps during World War II. Mare’s story is vivid and absorbing, and Davis’s depiction of a lesser-known facet of African American history is enlightening. HRB

Langston Hughes  The Negro Speaks of Rivers; illus. by E. B. Lewis
      Jump/Hyperion
      Reviewed fall 2009
From the pen of a teenage Hughes, this lyrical piece celebrates a people’s enduring determination to survive. Lewis’s landscape paintings, in earth-tone shades cooled by the blues of the rivers, are populated with a cross-generation of African Americans throughout history and also of today. HMS

2010 ALA awards