From Bank Street College of Education: Reuel Jordan, Dean, School for Children, President Augusta Kappner & Alice Belgray, Head, Children’s Book Committee

Children’s Book Committee at Bank Street College of Education Celebrates 2004

By Joan Baum, Ph.D.

Noting that the annual Bank Street College Children’s book awards are “unique” for having the “most diverse committee of judges”—a wide distribution of professional and lay members and representation from all age groups, including young reviewers, ages 2-14—Bank Street College president Dr. Augusta Souza Kappner also pointed out that the committee’s 600 selections, culled from approximately 4,000 submissions, were already included in Bank Street’s Best Children’s Books of the Year, a highly revered annual guide. Of course, the five winners in the competition categories of fiction, nonfiction and poetry—authors and illustrators—were the reason for the awards presentation and recipients were particularly eloquent this year in talking about their hopes for children’s literature and for advancing the cause of literacy nation wide. President Kappner, a grandmother, also noted that the six-year old love of her life delights in reading and expressed the hope that her granddaughter’s “sense of wonder” could be encouraged in all readers, the earlier the better.

Walter Dean Myers speaks about his poetry with Bank Street children

Reuel Jordan, Bank Street Dean of the School for Children also welcomed attendees and paid homage to the 60,000-book Bank Street library which, he said, was a “haven” for him, as well as for faculty, alumni and guests. Although each year is special, this one, he declared, was particularly so, given the across-the-board theme of courage and heroism that could be found in each winning work. The top prize for nonfiction for ages 6-9, for example, confronts the challenge of maintaining culture in the face of war. The Librarian of Basra: A True Story from Iraq (Harcourt), written and illustrated by Jeanette Winter, beautifully realizes the promise of the Flora Stieglitz Straus award to celebrate “a distinguished work of nonfiction which fulfills humanitarian ideals and serves as an inspiration to young people.” The story of a librarian who ingeniously saves precious books after her library is destroyed, the book answers the implicit question of how tragedy can be presented to young children. The answer here was to concentrate not on the war but on the efforts of the librarian, Alia. The nonfiction award for older readers, ages 12-14 was won by Phillip Hoose whose The Race to Save the Lord God Bird (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) proves that a fine scholar (who is also a performer and composer) can write a moving tale accessible to youngsters. Following the ivory-billed woodpecker for over 30 years, Hoose who hails from Maine, created an exciting tale of the history of the bird and of the scientists who tried to keep it from extinction.

The 2004 Claudia Lewis Award for Poetry was shared. The award, honoring the late Bank Street faculty member who served on the book committee, was presented to Walter Dean Myers for Here in Harlem: Poems in Many Voices (Holiday House). Accepting his certificate, Myers spoke of how as a child, curious but shy, he was a “secret reader,” but he always listened to others, and he came to believe that his calling was “to give voice to those who don’t have one or are reluctant to speak.” That he has done so in the 54 voices recreated in his book is obvious. In Hummingbird Nest: A Journal of Poems, with gorgeous illustrations by Barry Moser (Tricycle Press), Kristine O’Connell George, who leads poetry workshops in schools, tells, with a sense of wonder, of what she observed from her California home—the making of a nest and the fledging flights of the newborn—from the point of view of all the members of her family, including her beloved dog and cat.

The Josette Frank Award for fiction this year went to Ida B: and Her Plans to Maximize Fun, Avoid Disaster, and (Possibly) Save the World by Katherine Hannigan (Greenwillow). Dedicated to honor works of “outstanding literary merit in which children or young people deal in a positive and realistic way with difficulties in their world and grow emotionally and morally,” the award could have been given to the title alone, were it not that the story itself movingly and sometimes fiercely reflects Ida—and the author’s—growth in overcoming shyness and a private sense of self and in learning that trying is more important than achieving.

The book committee awards, under the aegis and expertise of committee president Alice Belgray, always an SRO affair, are truly one of the city’s most treasured tributes to literacy.#

For further info: see www.bankstreet.edu/bookcom/awards.html