PROFILES IN EDUCATION:
Dr. Alice Belgray, Chair, Children’s Book Committee, Bank Street College of Education
by Joan Baum, Ph.D.
“There’s nothing like it,” says
Alice Belgray of The Children’s Book Committee at Bank
Street College of Education,” which she has been chairing
since 1997 (and years before that, helping to coordinate as
a member). For those who don’t yet know about the 30-member
group, which publishes a list of The Best [600] Children’s
Books of the Year, a list of new releases to be read aloud
to Children of All Ages, and which runs a lively, auditorium-packed
annual breakfast awards ceremony at Bank Street for winners
in fiction, nonfiction and poetry, the Committee’s work
is now online (www.bankstreet.edu/bookcom).
The annotated lists, which are sold to libraries, schools,
parents, and educational organizations, are drawn up by a diverse
group that includes librarians, psychologists, social workers,
speech therapists, reading and speech specialists, teachers,
even a lawyer and an ex-parole officer. The group also includes
young reviewers, who included this past year a two-year old. “Children” means
up to age 14, but on its website the Committee has extended
its mission to select books (from 4000 annual submissions!)
that have literary value, are likely to have emotional impact
by offering a positive message and hope, by recommending teen
literature as well.
For Dr. Belgray, who has an M.A. and Ph. D. in Musicology and who came to the committee with an unusually rich and diverse background in publishing (she was the children’s book editor at the Jewish Publication Society), writing, record production, and grass roots state political activities, heading up the Children’s Book Committee was a chance to sustain and influence a life-long love of reading. She speaks movingly of a grandfather (Harvard, 1894) who gave her books for every possible holiday—a “sacred” trust—and who read to her out loud, though she also notes that her grandmother played piano. Then she chuckles, remembering that her grandparents lived on 112th Street on the West Side—the site of Bank Street—“speaking of cyclical...”
Her career move to the Children’s Book Committee could well serve as a model of professional development. Loving music, she nonetheless sensed she was in a world that was relatively restricted. She credits the program Womanspace as turnaround for her. At the Columbia site, pursuing options, she became an intern at Hastings House, a children’s book publisher and knew she was home! Certainly, past experience in leadership positions honed her administrative skills for the committee position. Under her aegis, the group has made great strides, constituting “tangible evidence of the promotion of literacy” in a way that engages young imaginations and promotes life-long reading. Of course, she looks to do more. Sponsorship by Bank Street has been “wonderful” and President Kappner’s participation in the awards ceremony, inspiring. But Dr. Belgray also looks to funding to ensure the continued printing of the lists and their widest distribution. Ideally, if there were angels out there, she would love to give the lists away to schools and libraries, perhaps involve organizations friendly to working mothers in some “co-branding” sponsorships, and expand the annotated website. Meanwhile, the committee will continue to meet each week, discussing categories and criteria for next year’s 2004 awards.#
