Press Release:
April 28, 2010- Winners of the 2010 Jane Addams Children’s Book Awards were announced today by the Jane Addams Peace Association.
Nasreen’s Secret School: A True Story from Afghanistan
, written and illustrated by Jeanette Winter, Beach Lane Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing, is the winner in the Books for Younger Children Category.Marching for Freedom: Walk Together, Children, and Don’t You Grow Weary by Elizabeth Partridge, Viking Children’s Books, an imprint of Penguin Young Readers Group, is the winner in the Books for Older Children Category.
In Nasreen’s Secret School: A True Story from Afghanistan Nasreen’s parents are gone, her father taken one night by soldiers, her mother lost on her search to find him. Now living with only her grandmother, Nasreen stays inside herself, silent with trauma. Whispers about a forbidden school reach her grandmother who, with stealth, bravery and hope, brings Nasreen to the secret school hidden in the home of an equally-brave woman, a teacher of girls. Framed stylized paintings in hues that symbolically reflect the path of Nasreen’s healing extend the story told in the plain, heartfelt voice of her grandmother. The power of education and resistance stand out in this all-too-true contemporary tale of the human toll exacted by war and the oppression of women.
Marching for Freedom: Walk Together, Children, and Don’t You Grow Weary is a breathtaking tribute to the courageous, passionate African-American children who demanded voting rights through nonviolent action in the historic 1963 March from Selma to Montgomery. Riveting chronology, stunning photographs, and telling details from oral history interviews recreate the children’s anger, terror, solidarity and purpose moment-by-moment. This palpable sense of immediacy crystallizes the commitment of young people who acted on behalf of human rights when they were most frightened and “the end” was unclear and out of sight. Vital and forceful, this testament to the power of youth and collective nonviolent action inspires activism by delving deeply into the heart of a pivotal moment in the history of youth and civil rights in the United States.
Two books were named Honor Books in the Books for Younger Children Category:
Sojourner Truth’s Step-Stomp Stride, by Andrea Davis Pinkney & Brian Pinkney, published by Disney-Jump at the Sun Books, has been named an Honor Book for Younger Children. Born a slave in upstate New York, Sojourner Truth, an iconic figure in the abolitionist and woman’s suffrage movements, was “Meant for speaking. Meant for preaching. Meant for teaching about freedom.” Told with punch and vigor, this energetic picture book biography marches along with Truth as she frees herself from bondage and ultimately delivers her legendary women’s rights speech to a church filled with white men in 1851. Short storyteller-style sentences punctuated with exclamation points and meaningful capitalizations evoke Truth’s spirit and force. Illustrations in a palette of yellows alive with whirling lines keep the momentum, energy, sorrow, seriousness and fervor of Sojourner Truth’s unwavering quest for social justice front