Book Awards
I am the father of three very young children: Ayaan, now thirteen, Ebyaan, now twelve, and my ten-year-old son, Libaan. The differences in our ages are such that strangers frequently approach me and tell me how sweet and well behaved my grandchildren are. This is not the sort of thing...
I just want to start by saying the real award for me is to be honored by all of you. To be in a room full of people who have fought the fight and have done the work that embodies what the Coretta Scott King Book Awards represent is humbling....
I have been writing and telling stories my entire adult life. My first love was journalism — what I consider to be truth-telling. Then I fell in love with spoken word poetry — what I consider to be testifying. The need to tell the truth and to testify has always...
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....
104 articles
ALREADY A SUBSCRIBER? LOG IN
We are currently offering this content for free. Sign up now to activate your personal profile, where you can save articles for future viewing.
ALREADY A SUBSCRIBER? LOG IN
Thank you for visiting.
We’ve noticed you are using a private browser. To continue, please log in or create an account.
