#american book award

[intellectures]

Komplexe Aufzeichnungen

Alice Walker ist eine der renommiertesten Schwarzen Autorinnen des 20. Jahrhunderts. Vor wenigen Tagen ist sie 80 Jahre alt geworden. In ihren Tagebüchern begegnet einem diese Lichtgestalt in all ihrer Ambivalenz.

Alice Walker ist eine der renommiertesten Schwarzen Autorinnen des 20. Jahrhunderts. Vor wenigen Tagen ist sie 80 Jahre alt geworden. In ihren Tagebüchern begegnet einem diese Lichtgestalt in all ihrer Ambivalenz. Continue reading Komplexe Aufzeichnungen

[sassafrasmoonshine]

Strega Nona (based on an old fairy tale) written and illustrated by Tomie dePaola • 1975 • Prentice Hall, New Jersey, publisher

[coochiequeens]

Now that Neil Gaiman is being exposed for being an abuser can we talk about how he won the Newbery in 2009 even though since a whole chapter was previously published (and received another award) it shouldn't have qualified?

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 1, 2009

GRAVEYARD BOOK TO BE STRIPPED OF NEWBERY?

For the first time in history, a title selected for the highest honor in children’s literature, the John Newbery Medal, may be stripped of the prize. This past weekend, a committee of concerned librarians convened in Chicago with a petition demanding the American Library Association revoke the medal given to Neil Gaiman’s THE GRAVEYARD BOOK at the recent midwinter conference. At issue is the book’s eligibility for the award.

“The terms for the Newbery Medal are crystal clear,” states Carol Barbour of the Topeka Public Library, who is leading the anti-GRAVEYARD effort. “In order for a book to be eligible, it must be an original work published during the preceding year. If a book -- or even a portion of a book -- has been previously published it is considered out of contention.”

Ms. Barbour is referring to the fourth chapter of THE GRAVEYARD BOOK, titled “The Witch’s Gravestone,” which was previously published in at least two 2007 anthologies, WIZARDS : MAGICAL TALES FROM THE MASTERS OF MODERN FANTASY (Berkley) and M IS FOR MAGIC (HarperCollins.)

“Carol Barbour has no case,” says an ALA member, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Before a book can be considered for the Newbery, it must be thoroughly vetted by the Association for Library Service to Children. I’m quite sure that THE GRAVEYARD BOOK was deemed completely eligible in every regard. I can’t believe that anyone is taking this sideshow seriously.”

But the American Library Association apparently is taking Barbour’s complaint very seriously, even holding a rare closed-door meeting with her committee this past Sunday afternoon.

“It was insane,” said one ALA member in attendance. “Carol started the meeting by dramatically ripping the gold foil sticker off her copy of THE GRAVEYARD BOOK, then said that every librarian in the nation would soon be following suit when the award is revoked.”

Referring to Sunday’s closed-door session as “productive,” Barbour said, “I certainly wouldn’t be pressing this issue if Gaiman’s book contained just a few previously-published paragraphs, or even a short chapter. But “The Witch’s Headstone” is -- hello? -- forty-five pages in length and takes up nearly fifteen percent of the novel! When it was published in the WIZARDS anthology it won a Locus Award as the year’s ‘best novelette.’ Readers may approach THE GRAVEYARD BOOK expecting the literary equivalent of a gourmet meal, but what they’re really getting is Gaiman’s leftovers.”

Some ALA members have referred to Ms. Barbour as a “children’s book gadfly” who has tried to nominate herself for the Newbery, Caldecott

and other award committees many times in the past but has never received enough votes to serve on these juries. Some recall her aborted attempt to revoke the 2007 Newbery winner, THE HIGHER POWER OF LUCKY, because of its “unwholesome language.” Last year she protested Brian Selznick’s THE INVENTION OF HUGO CABRET winning the Caldecott because she considered it “too heavy for wee hands to hold.” But this year she seems to have found some major-league support in her attempt to bring down THE GRAVEYARD BOOK. The picture on the left shows a triumphant Barbour (in blue, holding Gaiman's book) after last Sunday’s meeting, posing with Shirley Sach of Ball State University, who served on the Newbery Committee that selected THE HIGHER POWER OF LUCKY and Lotta Shoppe of the Van Pelt Public Library, who was a member of the jury that awarded KIRA-KIRA the prize in 2005.

The American Library Association has issued a press release stating that the Association for Library Service to Children is “seriously” considering Barbour’s petition. If it takes the unprecedented move of revoking Gaiman’s award, they must decide whether a new winner will be selected -- possibly chosen from one of this year’s four Honor Books -- or whether 2009 will just go down in the record books as the first and only year in which no official winner was named.

Upon learning that his book may be stripped of the Newbery, author Neil Gaiman twittered, “@$#&! I might lose the @$#&ING NEWBERY! THIS IS SO @$#&ING AWFUL!”

When told of Gaiman’s comments, Carol Barbour rolled her eyes and said, “Isn’t that almost word-for-vulgar-word what he said when he thought he won the award? Hello? Even his tweets are repeats.”

The American Library Association has said they will make a ruling in this case very soon -- possibly as early as today, April 1, 2009.

POSTED BY PETER D. SIERUTA 

That chapter won a Locus award in 2008 the year before it became a chapter I the graveyard book.

https://www.locusmag.com/2008/Locus_Awards_Winners.html

And that's not even going into the theories that the committee behind the Newbery was trying get extra attention by giving it to Gaiman on January 26, 2009 soon before the much anticipated Coroline was released on February 6, 2009.

[uwmspeccoll]

A Jerry Pickney Saturday

Jerry Pinkney (1939-2021) was a multi-award-winning American illustrator and children’s book author. His numerous awards include a Caldecott Medal (2010); five Caldecott Honor Book awards; five Coretta Scott King Book Awards (the most for any illustrator); five Coretta Scott King Honor Awards; the Coretta Scott King-Virginia Hamilton Lifetime Achievement Award (2016); the 2016 Laura Ingalls Wilder Award; four Gold medals, four Silver medals, and the 2016 Original Art Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Illustrators; and he was nominated twice for the Hans Christian Andersen Award, considered the Nobel Prize for children's literature, among many other awards and recognitions.

The images shown here are Pickney’s pencil, color pencil, and watercolor illustrations for children’s book author Alan Schroeder’s 1996 fictional biography, Minty, A Story of Young Harriet Tubman, published in New York by Dial Books for Young Readers. This book won Pickney the 1997 Coretta Scott King Book Award for Illustrator, and the book was a Cooperative Children's Book Center Choice for 1996.

Schroeder writes that “While Minty is a fictional account of Harriet Tubman’s childhood, and some scenes have been invented for narrative purposes, the basic facts are true.” Of illustrating this book, Pinkney writes:

The challenge that Minty initially posed for me came from not having a clear picture of Harriet Tubman’s early childhood. However, I was able to imagine the spirited eight-year-old Minty, using Alan Schroeder’s strong text and Harriet Tubman’s biography, The Moses of Her People, as springboards. The National Park Service was also helpful . . . as was the Banneker-Douglas Museum in Maryland, where extensive research uncovered the style of plantations around Maryland during Minty’s childhood and authentic details regarding backgrounds, dress, food, and living conditions of the enslaved as well as the slave owners. My interest was to give some sense of Minty’s noble spirit and open a window to understanding the day-to-day, sunup to sundown life of the slave, by individualizing the hardships in overwhelming circumstances.

In 1978 I was privileged to create the first Harriet Tubman commemorative stamp for the U.S. Postal Service. This book, then, brings me full circle with Harriet’s life and courage.

View another post with illustrations by Jerry Pinkney.

View more posts from our Historical Curriculum Collection.

View more Black History Month posts.

[basicallyanotherwitchesthing]

Jason Michaels - The Devil is Alive and Well and Living in America Today - Award - 1973

[phierecycled]

book of mormon don’t perform hello challenge

[xtruss]

Why Parents Still Try to Ban ‘The Color Purple’ in Schools

Four decades after it was released, Alice Walker’s enduring classic remains at the forefront of the battle over what is available on library shelves.

— By Erin Blakemore | August 22, 2023

Alice Walker reads from her Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning novel, The Color Purple. Since it was first published in 1982, the critically acclaimed book has been targeted by movements pushing to censor the book's subject matter. Photograph By Johnny Crawford, Atlanta Journal-Constitution/AP

When Alice Walker’s The Color Purple hit bookshelves in 1982, it blew away critics, became a nationwide bestseller, and endeared itself to readers who found pain and inspiration in its pages.

But in the years since its publication, the acclaimed novel has become famous for another reason: It’s one of the most challenged books in the nation, withstanding criticisms aimed at its depictions of race and sex, its portrayal of abuse and agony, and even its spelling and style.

Here’s how The Color Purple became one of the nation’s most banned books—and why it continues igniting controversy to this day.

“A Spiritual Experience”

Walker, who grew up in Jim Crow-era Georgia, described writing the book as a “spiritual experience” inspired by the strength and grit of the Black Southern women she made her heroines. The epistolary epic follows 40 years in the lives of its main characters Celie, Shug, and Nettie, who survive incest, domestic abuse, and racism in the early twentieth century—all while carving out joy, independence, and dignity along the way.

When it was released in 1982, the book immediately caught the attention of both the critics and the reading public, who praised the book for its portrayals of both the brutality and sorrow of racism and sexual violence and its celebration of Black women.

It was critically acclaimed, winning both the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award for 1983, and inspired a popular 1985 film directed by Stephen Spielberg and starring Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey.

Banning ‘Purple’

But something else accompanied the novel as its renown grew: controversy. Though educators recognized the book’s potential as a teaching tool, some parents and community members objected to its presence in school curriculums and libraries.

The first major attempt to ban the book occurred in 1984, when a parent petitioned against its use in an Oakland, California classroom. In a 1985 essay, Walker recalled reading frequent updates on “how the banning was coming along” and watching the book’s sales skyrocket.

“I felt I had written the book as a gift to the people. All of them,” Walker wrote. “If they wanted it, let them fight to keep it, as I had to fight to deliver it.”

Fight they did. Though the Oakland schools ultimately decided not to remove the book from classrooms, the book has consistently been challenged nationwide since its publication, repeatedly making it on the American Library Association’s list of most frequently challenged books.

Why Parents Challenge the Book

Attempts to ban The Color Purple usually contest Walker’s use of slang and profanity, the book’s portrayal of brutal Black men, a same-sex encounter between the two main characters, and its depiction of sexual violence in its first pages.

“One can eat from a cafeteria or a dumpster…but one would hope those placed in charge of our children would have exercised better oversight,” wrote one parent in a characteristic 2013 challenge in Brunswick County, North Carolina. (The book has survived multiple attempted bans in the Brunswick County school district.)

But the same pages that provoke ire in some have inspired others.

Oprah Winfrey, who endured sexual abuse as a child, later recalled reading the first page of The Color Purple “and thinking ‘Oh God, I’m not alone.’” After Winfrey co-starred in the first movie adaptation of the film, she began talking about her own experiences on her talk show.

TV historians now credit the self-disclosures inspired by Walker’s book with helping Winfrey develop her winning confessional interview format.

Modern Attempts to Ban the Novel

Efforts to ban The Color Purple have continued during a recent wave of attempted book bans.

In 2022, the American Library Association documented over 1,200 attempts to ban or restrict library materials—double the number of challenges from the previous year—and most of which attempted to remove multiple titles from shelves.

Among them was The Color Purple, which was removed from library shelves in Florida’s Indian County School District at the request of a parent group that objected to 156 of the books on school shelves, claiming the books contain everything from pornography to critical race theory. Though the district’s school board declined to ban The Color Purple, it did remove five of the other books on the list and approve a permission slip allowing parents to restrict their child’s use of school library books.

With news of an upcoming movie adaptation of the acclaimed musical based on the book, The Color Purple is poised to regain the national spotlight. Only time will tell if the movie will spark more challenges—but for now, the legacy of a book one 1982 reviewer called “indelibly affecting” is secure.

To date, the book has sold over 5 million copies—a number sure to rise as a new generation meets its heroines.

[8-rock]

I just learned that my new picture book, WHAT DO BROTHAS DO ALL DAY?, has been nominated for a 2023 School Library Journal Undies Case Cover Award! 🎉

The Undies Awards recognize the illustrated covers beneath the book jacket. WHAT DO BROTHAS DO ALL DAY? was nominated for the “Zoom In” category.

Voting ends on Friday, December 8; I would appreciate your vote.

You must vote in every category to submit your vote.

🚨 Please vote and share! 🚨

🗳️ VOTE HERE -> lnkd.in/ganj--uA

[desdasiwrites]

–Anna-Marie McLemore, When the Moon Was Ours

[qbdatabase]

Daily Book - Elatsoe

Elatsoe Darcie Little Badger YA Fantasy / Mystery, 2020, 360 pg Native American (Apache) asexual female MC Elatsoe lives in this slightly stranger America. She can raise the ghosts of dead animals, a skill passed down through generations of her Lipan Apache family. Her beloved cousin has just been murdered in a town that wants no prying eyes. But she is going to do more than pry. The picture-perfect facade of Willowbee masks gruesome secrets, and she will rely on her wits, skills, and friends to tear off the mask and protect her family.

[madamemarmot]

The room was toasty, cozy, fifty-nine bucks a night. She knew that people got murdered at this motel, but she liked it there anyway. She was at home in places of humble ugliness. It was the only aesthetic that could hold her without making her nervous; she did not have to worry about deserving it. The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty

[banned-library]

BETWEEN THE WORLD AND ME by Ta-Nehesi Coates (Spiegel & Grau, 2015)

Between the World and Me is a 2015 nonfiction book written by American author Ta-Nehisi Coates and published by Spiegel & Grau. It is written as a letter to the author's teenage son about the feelings, symbolism, and realities associated with being Black in the United States. Coates recapitulates American history and explains to his son the "racist violence that has been woven into American culture." Coates draws from an abridged, autobiographical account of his youth in Baltimore, detailing the ways in which institutions like the school, the police, and even "the streets" discipline, endanger, and threaten to disembody black men and women. The work takes structural and thematic inspiration from James Baldwin's 1963 epistolary book The Fire Next Time. Unlike Baldwin, Coates sees white supremacy as an indestructible force, one that Black Americans will never evade or erase, but will always struggle against.

The book won the 2015 National Book Award for Nonfiction and was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction.

“Educators” in Florida and Texas don’t want you to read this book. [my quotes]

source

[m-c-easton]

Book Picks: The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories

I'm still reading through the best books of 2021/2022, and my fav so far is The Haunting of Hajji Hotak. Masterful and riveting, these stories of war and diaspora will break your heart and bind it up again. Jamil Jan Kochai is an author to watch. #reading

I’m continuing to work my way through titles that made waves in 2021 and 2022, and this is my favorite so far. If you are in the market for masterful short stories, Jamil Jan Kochai’s collection will not disappoint. A National Book Award finalist, The Haunting of Hajji Hotak feels like it enfolds the entire world in its embrace, spanning the United States and Afghanistan, teen gamers and aging…

[galleryyuhself]

Galleryyuhself - As an Educator whenever my children, yes, children because teaching is as much about nurturing minds and hearts as parenting is....whenever one rises and surpasses their abilities, mum feels so very proud. I do so today with Marlon Darbeau. Congratulations to you Blayne Clark

....................

First time entrants AAF Caribbean American Advertising Award) and Overall Best in Show, Best In Print, Gold & 3 Silvers. Blayne Clarkhttps://newsday.co.tt/.../trinidad-and-tobago-design.../

[coochiequeens]

Happy International Women’s Day to women who prioritize women, especially today.

This site gives the deeper dive about the Trans Identified Male who transitioned after his career in the military was over instead of a woman in medicine or a woman in science on International Women’s Day off all days? Fuck that.

Selma Fraiberg (March 8, 1918–1981) was an American child psychoanalyst, author and social worker. She studied infants with congenital blindness in the 1970s. She found that blind babies had three problems to overcome: learning to recognize parents from sound alone, learning about permanence of objects, acquiring a typical or healthy self-image. She also found that vision acts as a way of pulling other sensory modalities together and without sight babies are delayed. In addition to her work with blind babies, she also was one of the founders of the field of infant mental health and developed mental health treatment approaches for infants, toddlers and their families. Her work on intergenerational transmission of trauma such as described in her landmark paper entitled "Ghosts in the Nursery"[1] has had an important influence on the work of living psychoanalysts and clinical researchers such as Alicia Lieberman and Daniel Schechter Her seminal contribution to childhood development, "The Magic Years", is still in use by students of childhood development and early childhood education throughout the United States. The Magic Years, which deals with early childhood and has been translated into 11 languages, was written when she was teaching at the Tulane Medical School in New Orleans.

At the time of her death, Selma Fraiberg was a professor of child psychoanalysis at the University of California, San Francisco and a clinician who devoted her career to helping troubled children. She was also professor emeritus of child psychoanalysis at the University of Michigan Medical School, where she had taught from 1963 to 1979, and had also been director of the Child Developmental Project in Washtenaw County, Mich., for children with emotional problems.

Fraiberg's work is said to have paralleled that of Anna Freud, a pioneer in child psychoanalysis. Both were keenly interested in young blind people. For 15 years Professor Fraiberg studied the development of children who were blind from birth, and this led to her writing Insights From the Blind: Comparative Studies of Blind and Sighted Infants, published in 1977. In the same year, she wrote Every Child's Birthright: In Defense of Mothering, a study of the early mother-child relationship in which she argued that all subsequent development is based on the quality of the child's first attachments.

Lilia Ann Abron (born March 8, 1945[1]) is an entrepreneur and chemical engineer. In 1972, Abron became the first African American woman to earn a PhD in chemical engineering.

Abron was born in Memphis, Tennessee,was the second of four daughters.[5]She was born prematurely, at home, and had to be rushed to the hospital by her aunt in a cab, as ambulances were not available for African Americans at the time.[5]

Her parents were both educators who had attended LeMoyne College (now LeMoyne-Owen College). Her father, Ernest Buford Abron, had sustained an injury playing football in college, and was thus unable to serve during World War II. He worked as a Pullman porter and later was a teacher. Abron's mother, Bernice Wise Abron, was a typist from Arkansas. She typed briefs for Wiley Branton, the Little Rock Nine's defense attorney.

Abron's parents were Baptists and she was baptized at the age of 9. She participated in Girl Scouts and in the junior choir at her church.

Abron attended a public school and was placed in the school's math and science track. After graduating from Memphis High School, she decided to study medicine.

Abron was assistant professor of civil engineering at Tennessee State University from 1971. She was also an assistant professor of environmental engineering Vanderbilt University from 1973. In 1975, she moved Howard University as assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, simultaneously working at Washington Technical Institute (now part of the University of the District of Columbia).[8][5]

Dr. Abron is a registered professional engineer, and a member of the Water Environmental Federation, the American Society of Civil Engineers, the American Water Works Association, the Society of Sigma Xi, and the American Association of University Women.[5][9] She also serves on the Engineering Advisory Board for the National Sciences Foundation.[5]

In 2004, she was elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.[10] She was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2020, for "leadership in providing technology-driven sustainable housing and environmental engineering solutions in the United States and South Africa".[11] She was inducted into Tau Beta Pi, DC Alpha Chapter as an Eminent Engineer, and she is a History Maker®.

She has been bestowed the highest honor - Distinguished Member, Class of 2021 - of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). As of January 2021, she became President of The American Academy of Environmental Engineers and Scientists (AAEES).  

PEER Consultants, P.C.[edit]

In 1978, Abron founded and became President and CEO of PEER Consultants, P.C. [3][5][12][13] She was the first African-American to start an engineering consulting firm focused on environmental issues and concerns relating to the physical and human environments. [14] PEER offers engineering and construction management services, environmental management and sustainability services, and advisory/consulting services.[15] With headquarters in Washington, DC and additional offices in Baltimore, MD, Burlington, MA, and Clearwater, FL, PEER is strategically located to serve its clients throughout the U.S. Since 1978, the firm is focused on providing transformative, appropriate, and sustainable solutions for its clients’ challenging environmental problems.

With this consulting firm, Abron succeeded in proving that by enacting sustainable practices in poverty-stricken parts of the world, living conditions there can drastically improve.[16] In 1995, Abron co-founded PEER Africa Pty. (Ltd.), with the mission of building energy-efficient homes in post-apartheid South Africa.[8] Abron was presented with a United Nations award for her work in developing low-cost energy-efficient housing.[5] The company carried out projects all over Africa, including in Mali, Uganda and Nigeria.

Personal life

Abron is a member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority.[9] She gives talks and presentations related to energy and the environment.[17][18] She is particularly active in promoting science education, and through her company, offers financial support to science fair participants. PEER staff are encouraged to work with students in their neighborhood schools, and Abron herself mentors students.[5]

She cites the book Silent Spring by Rachel Carson as an inspiration for entering the environmental movement.[2]

Abron is a Christian who began her three-year term serving as deacon at The First Baptist Church of the City of Washington, D.C. on June 17, 2018.[6] She previously served as president of the Washington D.C. chapter of Jack and Jill for America.[5] She also plays the hand bells in the Angelus church choir.[

Honors

William W. Grimes Award for Excellence in Chemical Engineering from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, 1993[5]

Admission to the Engineering Distinguished Alumni Academy at the University of Iowa, 1996[5]

Hancher-Finkbine Alumni Medallion from the Finkbine Society of the University of Iowa, awarded for learning, leadership and loyalty to the university, 1999[5][8]

Induction into the National Black College Alumni Hall of Fame, 1999[5]

Magic Hands Award by LeMoyne-Owen College, May 2001[8]

Alumni Achievement Award, Washington University School of Engineering and Applied Science, 2001[5]

American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2004[8][19]

Superior Achievement from American Academy of Environmental Engineers & Scientists, 2012[20]

[sweetsavageflame]

Category Romance: Elusive as the Unicorn by Carole Mortimer

The most exciting aspects of Adam and Eve—the main characters in Carole Mortimer’s Elusive as the Unicorn—sadly start and end with their names. MILD SPOILERS 😉 The Book Elusive as the Unicorn by Carole Mortimer is another mediocre romance that Harlequin publishers bafflingly honored with their so-called Award of Excellence. Why they chose this ho-hum Carole Mortimer entry when she’s written…