What do Lois Lowry, Patricia Polacco, and Philip Pullman all have in common? In addition to being best-selling authors, they are all past recipients of the International Reading Association's Children's Book Awards, which are given for an author's first or second published book written for children or young people.
Here are this year's winners, which parents may want to share with their youngsters. Please note that the young adult winners deal with mature subject matter.
Lita Judge won this award for One Thousand Tracings: Healing the Wounds of World War II, published by Hyperion Books for Children. One Thousand Tracings tells the story of how, after World War II, Judge's grandparents organized a relief effort from their Midwestern farm and sent care packages of food, clothing, and shoes to many desperate people in Europe.
Noted reviewer Hazel Rochman cited Judge's "stirring" artwork and her focus on the "dramatic, realistic details of those in need." Growing up, Judge spent summers living with her grandparents, and this book serves as her tribute to their humanitarianism.
Eigth-grade teacher Bill Wise won this award for Louis Sockalexis: Native American Baseball Pioneer, illustrated by Bill Farnsworth and published by Lee & Low. Wise had grown up hearing stories about Sockalexis, a Native American of the Penobscot tribe who played major league baseball for the Cleveland Spiders from 1897 to 1899. Years later, after further research, Wise was inspired to write about Sockalexis's great courage and passion for baseball.
The book culminates with a dramatic scene at the Polo Grounds in New York in 1897 when Sockalexis crushes a home run off feared pitcher Amos Rusie, finally earning the respect of fans who were slow to accept the thought of a Native American playing professional baseball.
Loree Griffin Burns, who has a doctorate in biochemistry, says she was initially attracted to Houghton Mifflin's Scientists in the Field series and the way in which it makes science exciting and accessible to children. Her award-winning contribution to that series is Tracking Trash: Flotsam, Jetsam, and the Science of Ocean Motion, published by Houghton Mifflin.
Tracking Trash chronicles how oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer monitors the travels of sneakers, hockey gloves, and rubber ducks that have spilled into the ocean. It describes the Eastern Garbage Patch, a "floating garbage dump" in the Pacific Ocean that is as big as the state of Alaska, and it offers ideas for what we all can do to help.
Retired lawyer Constance Leeds won this award for The Silver Cup, published by Penguin. Set in a small German village in 1095 and 1096, the book tells the story of Anna, a 15-year-old girl who risks everything to rescue Leah, an orphaned Jewish girl whose only connection to her family is a silver cup.
The two forge an unlikely but strong friendship. Kirkus Reviews noted how the author's "rich, sensory prose captures a time and place in a wealth of particular details." The book provides an engrossing picture of life in the 11th century—life marked by courage, will, and most of all—hope.
Educator, poet, and peace activist Ibtisam Barakat won this award for her book Tasting the Sky: A Palestinian Childhood, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. School Library Journal called the book a "moving memoir of a Palestinian woman's childhood," chronicling the author's experiences growing up in Ramallah, West Bank, during the Six-Day War of June 1967 and after.
Tasting the Sky captures what it is like to be a child whose world is shattered by war. Barakat stitches together memories of being separated from her family at the outbreak of the war, of the harshness of life as a Palestinian refugee, and of her joy at learning to read. Today, Barakat focuses on healing social injustices and the hurts of wars, especially those involving young people.
Laura Resau was honored for her second book, Red Glass, published by Delacorte. "In poetic, memorable language," a Booklist review says, "Resau offers a rare glimpse into an indigenous culture, grounding her story in the universal questions and conflicts of a young teen." The protagonist, Sophie, shows great courage as she takes a dangerous journey and learns that life is beautiful even in the midst of death.
Like her debut book, What the Moon Saw, Red Glass is set in rural Mexico, where Resau worked for two years as an English teacher and anthropologist. Resau is donating a portion of her royalties to indigenous rights organizations in Latin America.
In addition to choosing the winners of this year's IRA Children's Book Awards, the selection committee named the following notable books.
IRA awards honor promising authors (October/November 2008). Reading Today 26(2), 40.
Journals
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