Book Awards
Winner An American Story by Kwame Alexander; illus. by Dare Coulter Primary, Intermediate Little, Brown 56 pp. 1/23 9780316473125 $18.99 Alexander and Coulter have created a powerful counternarrative in their efforts to answer the question, “How do you tell a story about slavery?” Starting before Africans were forcibly brought to...
Winner Nigeria Jones by Ibi Zoboi High School Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins 384 pp. 5/23 9780062888846 $19.99 e-book ed. 9780062888860 $12.99 Sixteen-year-old Nigeria is expected to lead the youth of the Movement (which is “like a small African West Philly village in the big, white state of Pennsylvania”) and model what...
Future editor of Freewater. Photo courtesy of Alexandra Hightower. On a recent visit to her family home in Atlanta, Alex(andra) Hightower came across some papers from her tenth-grade English class. Looking at her essays and the notes in the margins, Alex was struck by how the work she did in...
Sonali Fry and Frank Morrison. Photo courtesy of Sonali Fry. Every time I speak with Frank Morrison, I learn a cool fact about him. For instance, during one conversation, he told me that when he was a child, his favorite pastime was drawing Quicky, the official Nestle’s Nesquik mascot. What...
Amina in seventh grade. Photo courtesy of Amina Luqman-Dawson. Working with Amina Luqman-Dawson has been nothing short of joyous. Back before the incredible double whammy of the Coretta Scott King and Newbery awards, before Freewater became a New York Times and Indie bestseller, I knew from my very first editorial...
Good Sunday morning! It is so good to be together with family, friends, and colleagues in Chicago. I am appreciative and honored to stand before you to respectfully accept the 2023 Coretta Scott King–Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement as Practitioner. Past winners of this distinguished award include Dorothy L....
I try to work on books that impact me personally. I was fortunate enough to illustrate Carole Boston Weatherford’s eloquent words and interpretation of the hymns that have been sung in African American community churches for what seems like centuries. I do not claim to have the same poetic abilities...
Clearly, I’m a very fortunate person. I’m blessed. I’ll never forget, and I’ll be forever grateful for, the phone call I received from the Coretta Scott King Book Awards Jury. As any writer in this room would understand, Freewater was like my baby. So, the moment you know your baby...
Winner Standing in the Need of Prayer: A Modern Retelling of the Classic Spiritual by Carole Boston Weatherford; illus. by Frank Morrison Primary, Intermediate Crown 32 pp. g 9/22 978-0-593-30634-5 $18.99 Library ed. 978-0-593-30635-2 $21.99 e-book ed. 978-0-593-30636-9 $10.99 This is a moving walk through African...
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