home > JACBA Main Page > 2008 Winners Page

JAPA's Brochure (784kb PDF)

2008 Winners of the Jane Addams Children's Book Awards

Announcement Press Release | PR - Print Version | Awards Presentation

Congratulations to the 55rd Jane Addams Children's Book Awardees
Martha Washington, Larry Dane Brimner, Lita Judge, Mitali Perkins, Christopher Paul Curtis
and Carole Boston Weatherford.

Honoring children's books since 1953

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                      

JANE ADDAMS CHILDREN’S BOOK AWARDS ANNOUNCED

April 28, 2008….Winners of the 2008 Jane Addams Children's Book Awards were announced today by the Jane Addams Peace Association. 

The Escape of Oney Judge:  Martha Washington’s Slave Finds Freedom, the winner in the Books for Younger Children Category, is written and illustrated by Emily Arnold McCully and published by Farrar Strauss Giroux. Mrs. Washington’s declares that young Oney is just like one of the Washington’s own children, but Oney is not fooled.  On the night Mrs. Washington tells Oney she will not grant her freedom upon her death, Oney thinks quickly, acts courageously and flees. Expressive watercolors within this well-researched biography portray the bravery of Ona Maria Judge, an African-American woman who claimed, and fought for, the right to have “no mistress but herself.”

We Are One:  The Story of Bayard Rustin by Larry Dane Brimner, published by Calkins Creek, an imprint of Boyds Mills Press, Inc., is the winner in the Books for Older Children Category.
Working behind the scenes because of his sexual orientation and unpopular political stands, African-American pacifist and civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, a trusted adviser to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., organized the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.  Succinct prose, powerful quotations and fresh historical photographs place the story of Rustin’s life alongside the story of the March, revealing the breadth and depth of Rustin’s decades of commitment to confronting racism and promoting peace in the United States and in countries around the world.

One Thousand Tracings:  Healing the Wounds of World War II, written and illustrated by Lita Judge is published by Hyperion Books for Children.  After discovering one thousand yellowed foot tracings in her grandmother’s attic, Lita Judge wrote this tribute to her grandmother who had used these newspaper tracings to find appropriately-sized shoes to send to needy German families in the aftermath of World War II. A combination of paintings, collages of original photographs and reproductions of foot tracings underscore the message of compassion at the heart of this family story.

Three books have won honors in the Books for Older Children category.

Rickshaw Girl by Mitali Perkins, with illustrations by Jamie Hogan and published by Charlesbridge, is a contemporary novel set in Bangladesh. In clear prose and detailed black-and-white drawings, ten-year-old Naimi excels at painting alpanas, traditional designs created by Bangladeshi women and girls. Her talent, though valued by her family, cannot buy rice or pay back the loan on her father’s rickshaw as a son’s contribution would do. Determined to help financially, Naimi disguises herself as a boy and sparks surprising events that reveal an expanding world for herself and women in her community.

Elijah of Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis, published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic, Inc., is a sensitively-written historical novel infused with the spirit of youth.  Eleven-year-old Elijah bursts with pride at being the first child born free in Buxton, Canada, a settlement of runaway slaves just across the border from Detroit.  When a scoundrel steals money saved to buy an enslaved family’s freedom, Elijah impulsively pursues the thief into Michigan. The journey brings him face-to-face with the terrors of slavery, pushing him to act courageously and compassionately in the name of freedom.

Birmingham, 1963 by Carole Boston Weatherford is published by Wordsong, an imprint of Boyds Mills Press, Inc. Deftly-written free verse and expertly-chosen archival photographs lay open the horror of the 1963 Birmingham church bombing by telling the story in the voice of an imagined girl in the “year I turned ten.”  Four memorial poems, each a tribute to one of the four girls murdered in the bombing, conclude this slim, powerful volume and carry its emphatic message:  No More Birminghams!

Since 1953, the Jane Addams Children's Book Award annually acknowledges books published in the U.S. during the previous year. Books commended by the Award address themes or topics that engage children in thinking about peace, justice, world community, and/or equality of the sexes and all races. The books also must meet conventional standards of literary and artistic excellence.

A national committee chooses winners and honor books for older and younger children.  Members of the 2007 Jane Addams Children's Book Awards Committee are Susan C. Griffith, Chair (Mt. Pleasant, Michigan), Barbara Bair (Washington, D. C.), Ann Bower (Harwich, Massachusetts), Sonja Cherry-Paul (Yonkers, New York), Eliza T. Dresang (Tallahassee, Florida), Oralia Garza de Cortes (Pasadena, California), MJ Grande (Juneau, Alaska), Daisy Gutierrez (Houston, Texas), Margaret Jensen (Madison, Wisconsin), Jo Montie (Minneapolis, Minnesota), Sarah Park (Long Beach, California), Pat Wiser (Sewanee,Tennessee) and Junko Yokota (Skokie, Illinois). Regional reading and discussion groups participated with many of the committee members throughout the jury’s evaluation and selection process.

The 2008 Jane Addams Children’s Book Awards will be presented Friday, October 17th in New York City. Details about the award event and about securing winner and honor book seals are available from the Jane Addams Peace Association (JAPA). Contact JAPA Executive Director Linda B. Belle, 777 United Nations Plaza, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10017-3521; by phone 212-682-8830; and by e-mail japa@igc.org.

For additional information about the Jane Addams Children’s Book Awards and a complete list of books honored since 1953, see www.janeaddamspeace.org.

Founded in 1948, JAPA is the educational arm of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF).  In addition to sponsoring the Jane Addams Children’s Book Awards and many other educational projects, JAPA houses the U.N. office of WILPF in New York City and owns the Jane Addams House in Philadelphia where the U.S. section of WILPF is located. Organized on April 28th in 1915, WILPF is celebrating its 93rd year. For information, visit www.wilpf.int.ch/.

- End -

2008 Jane Addams Children's Book Award Ceremony

Friday, October 17, 2008

Opening Remarks

Susan C. Griffith, Chair,

Jane Addams Children's Book Award Committee

Thank you, Ann, and thanks to the Jane Addams Peace Association and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom for sponsoring these awards that, for the 55th year, honor Jane Addams her principles, her philosophy, and her activism. As Chair of the Jane Addams Children's Book Award Committee, I would like to acknowledge:

• Erika Schlenkermann for her music,
• the special efforts of the JAPA Board in providing books for purchase and signing, (please stand)
• the work of the editors, book designers and publishers whose bring the books we honor into being,
• the girls of the Jane Addams Literature Circle for Girls

And, of course, all the members of the award committee.  Six of whom are here with us today:

• from Massachusetts, Ann Carpenter,
• from New York, Sonja Cherry-Paul,
• from Florida, Eliza Dresang,
• from Texas, Daisy Gutierrez,
• from Tenessee, Pat Wiser and
• from Illinois, Junko Yokota.

Other membersfrom Alaska, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Washington, D.C. and Californiaare listed on your program and are here in spirit.

Thirty five years ago, I was 21, fresh out of college and ready to take on the world as a school librarian. I returned to my home town and began working for a then-rural school system outside a Midwestern city. I was in charge of five elementary school libraries and reported to four principals.

My feminist lens was clear, my vision in sharp focus as I evaluated the five collections of books. I ordered every picture book with a strong female character, I ordered books like What Can She Be? A Lawyer (Goldreich & Goldreich, 1973) and I ordered biographies of the only women allowed to surface regularly in children's books at the time, women like Amelia Earhart, Eleanor Roosevelt and Jane Addams.

My heartfelt efforts met with a surprising range of responses: One of the principals addressed my actions with humor and derision. Another never spoke to me once all year. The third wrote a letter of complaint and had it placed in my personnel file. And the fourthsix-foot-three, Mr. Cooktook me out into the hall, looked down into my eyes, and said, Who was this Jane Addams anyway?

Before Mr. Cook ever called me into the hall, I knew that . . .

Jane Addams was a white, middle class single woman who, along with Ellen Gates Starr, founded Hull-House, one of the first settlement houses in this country. Hull House, like its inspiration Toynbee Hall in London and its counterparts across the United States, was a center of culture, advocacy and education located in the heart of a city. Hull House opened in September 1889 in the nineteenth ward of Chicago, a neighborhood of immigrant families living in the unsanitary, inhumane conditions that result from industrialized poverty.

And I knew that . . .

Jane Addams was a pacifist.

What I didn't know about Jane Addams then, and have learned since, includes . . .

First . . .

She spent the last twenty-five years of her life working for international peace. As part of this effort, in 1915, she was a founding member of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. She refused to support World War I even after the United States entered the conflict.

Second . . .

Jane Addams' lived outside the mainstream in her private life just as she chose to do in her public life. In doing so, she complicated and mitigated the privileges of class and race that were a part of her heritage.

In her public life, Jane Addams resisted identification with organized religion and insisted that Hull-House remain unaffiliated. She did her work not out a sense of charity nor as a missionary. She lived and worked with not for the people in her neighborhood.

In her private life, Addams enjoyed a life-time partnership with Mary Rozet Smith, a wealthy white Chicago woman who tirelessly supported Addams and her work at Hull-House . Addams' biographer Katherine Joslin chronicles Addams' and Smith's relationship as it developed in letters between the two. Joslin writes: Jane and Mary called their forty-year relationship, quite simply, a marriage (Joslin, 2004, p. 11).

And, finally . . .

Jane Addams was a writer and philosopher. She was, according to Victoria Bissell Brown, the most effective and prolific writer of her generation of reformers. She wrote and published twelve books and over 500 essays, speeches, editorials and columns. Stories of her own experiences and stories of the experiences she observed in her neighborhood and the world at large lie at the heart of all her writings.

Jane Addams, activist, pacifist, writer and philosopher was a self-determined woman whose astute, persistent, thoughtful action struck at the roots of social injustice during the first decades of the twentieth century-- what an inspiring and appropriate namesake for a book award that honors children's books that ask children to think about social justice and social responsibility in their own lives and the lives of others.

And so, with a deeper appreciation for Addams' life, philosopy and activis, developed over my own lifetime, I invite you to celebrate the books that carry her legacy forward into the twenty-first century--the 2008 Jane Addams Children's Book Award winners and honor books.

References

Brown, Victoria Bissell. (2001). Jane Addams. In R. L. Schultz & A. Hast (Eds.) Women building Chicago 1790-1990: A biographical dictionary . Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 14-22.

Joslin, Katherine. (2004). Jane Addams: A writer's life . Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

November 6, 2008

---

Click here for a list of complete list of winners of the
Jane Addams Children's Book Award.