Book Awards
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...
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...
I’ll begin with gratitude. Thank you to the Newbery committee for recognizing Freewater. You read my work, connected with it, and judged it worthy, regardless of my debut status. To Laura Schreiber, the editor who plucked Freewater from an ever-flowing river of manuscripts. Laura immediately had vision and excitement for...
Winner Freewater by Amina Luqman-Dawson Intermediate, Middle School Little, Brown 416 pp. g 2/22 978-0-316-05661-8 $16.99 e-book ed. 978-0-316-05674-8 $9.99 Many accounts of the Underground Railroad mention that enslaved Blacks would stick close to swamps as they made their way North, as the topography proved problematic for slave catchers. A...
Trivia about Newbery Award winners: At the Banquet When Marguerite Henry came to the 1949 ALA convention in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to accept the Newbery Medal for King of the Wind, she brought her horse, Misty, the subject of 1948 honoree Misty of Chincoteague. The publicity stunt was a surprise...
This has been a notorious year of attempts to ban children’s books by authors of color. But 2022 is also the year that Donna Barba Higuera’s middle-grade novel The Last Cuentista won the Newbery Medal. Celebrating a novel that explores stories as a human imperative is the perfect counterpoint to...
"It could never happen for a kid like me." Photo courtesy of Donna Barba Higuera. If someone had told me as a child that not only would I one day write a book, but that book would sit alongside those “golden-sticker books” like A Wrinkle in Time or Mrs. Frisby...
What did winning the Newbery Medal mean to me? It has taken some time to wrap my head around this question. The Last Cuentista won the Newbery Medal! I’ve texted my editor, Nick Thomas, a few times with, “We won the Newbery” and “Did that really happen?” just to help...
Poetry has so much to offer young readers: beautiful language, musical rhythms, creative formats, powerful emotions, and so much more. Yet, when it comes to award recognition, poetry has rarely had a place at the Newbery table. Just sixteen books of poetry have been recognized with Newbery Medals or Honors...
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