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Jane Addams Children's Book Award Winners
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First Woman In Congress
by Florence Meiman WhiteA biography of the first woman elected to Congress, who spent the 92 years of her life as a leader for woman suffrage, a lobbyist, and a social reformer.
Freedom's Children
by Ellen S. LevineIn this inspiring collection of true stories, thirty African-Americans who were children or teenagers in the 1950s and 1960s talk about what it was like for them to fight segregation in the South-to sit in an all-white restaurant and demand to be served, to refuse to give up a seat at the front of the bus, to be among the first to integrate the public schools, and to face violence, arrest, and even death for the cause of freedom."Thrilling...Nothing short of wonderful."-The New York TimesAwards:( A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year( A Booklist Editors' Choice
Ghost Boys
by Jewell Parker RhodesThe #1 Kids' Indie Next Pick A heartbreaking and powerful story about a black boy killed by a police officer, drawing connections through history, from award-winning author Jewell Parker Rhodes.
Only the living can make the world better. Live and make it better.
Twelve-year-old Jerome is shot by a police officer who mistakes his toy gun for a real threat. As a ghost, he observes the devastation that's been unleashed on his family and community in the wake of what they see as an unjust and brutal killing.
Soon Jerome meets another ghost: Emmett Till, a boy from a very different time but similar circumstances. Emmett helps Jerome process what has happened, on a journey towards recognizing how historical racism may have led to the events that ended his life. Jerome also meets Sarah, the daughter of the police officer, who grapples with her father's actions.
Once again Jewell Parker Rhodes deftly weaves historical and socio-political layers into a gripping and poignant story about how children and families face the complexities of today's world, and how one boy grows to understand American blackness in the aftermath of his own death.
A New York Times Bestseller
The Girl From the Tar Paper School
by Teri KanefieldBefore the Little Rock Nine, before Rosa Parks, before Martin Luther King Jr. and his March on Washington, there was Barbara Rose Johns, a teenager who used nonviolent civil disobedience to draw attention to her cause. In 1951, witnessing the unfair conditions in her racially segregated high school, Barbara Johns led a walkout--the first public protest of its kind demanding racial equality in the U.S.--jumpstarting the American civil rights movement. Ridiculed by the white superintendent and school board, local newspapers, and others, and even after a cross was burned on the school grounds, Barbara and her classmates held firm and did not give up. Her school's case went all the way to the Supreme Court and helped end segregation as part of Brown v. Board of Education.
Jane Addams Children’s Book Award Winner
Growing Up in Coal Country
by Susan Campbell BartolettiThrough interviews, newspaper accounts, and other original sources, Bartoletti pieced together a picture of life in the Pennsylvania coal mines at the turn of the century.
Habibi
by Naomi Shihab NyeFourteen-year-old Liyana Abboud would rather not have to change her life...especially now that she has been kissed, for the very first time and quite by surprise, by a boy named Jackson. But when her parents announce that Liyana's family is moving from St. Louis, Missouri, to Jerusalem -- to the land where her father was born -- Liyana's whole world shifts. What does Jerusalem hold for Liyana? A grandmother, a Sitti, she has never met, for one. A history much bigger than she is. Visits to the West Bank village where her aunts and uncles live. Mischief. Old stone streets that wind through time and trouble. Opening doors, dark jail cells, a new feeling for peace, and Omer...the intriguing stranger whose kisses replace the one she lost when she moved across the ocean.
Jane Addams Children’s Book Award Winner
Harvesting Hope
by Kathleen KrullCesar Chavez is known as one of America's greatest civil rights leaders. When he led a 340-mile peaceful protest march through California, he ignited a cause and improved the lives of thousands of migrant farmworkers. But Cesar wasn't always a leader. As a boy, he was shy and teased at school. His family slaved in the fields for barely enough money to survive. Cesar knew things had to change, and he thought that--maybe--he could help change them. So he took charge. He spoke up. And an entire country listened. An author's note provides historical context for the story of Cesar Chavez's life.
Hiroshima No Pika
by Toshi MarukiAugust 6, 1945, 8:15 a.m.
Hiroshima. Japan
A little girl and her parents are eating breakfast, and then it happened.
HIROSHIMA NO PIKA. This book is dedicated to the fervent hope the Flash will never happen again, anywhere.
Jane Addams Children’s Book Award Winner
How to Find What You're Not Looking For
by Veera HiranandaniNew historical fiction from a Newbery Honor–winning author about how middle schooler Ariel Goldberg's life changes when her big sister elopes following the 1967 Loving v. Virginia decision, and she's forced to grapple with both her family's prejudice and the antisemitism she experiences, as she defines her own beliefs. Twelve-year-old Ariel Goldberg's life feels like the moment after the final guest leaves the party. Her family's Jewish bakery runs into financial trouble, and her older sister has eloped with a young man from India following the Supreme Court decision that strikes down laws banning interracial marriage. As change becomes Ariel's only constant, she's left to hone something that will be with her always--her own voice.
Ida B. Wells, Voice of Truth Educator, Feminist, and Anti-Lynching Civil Rights Leader
by Michelle DusterIda B. Wells, Voice of Truth is an inspiring picture book biography of the groundbreaking journalist and civil rights activist as told by her great-granddaughter Michelle Duster and illustrated by Coretta Scott King Award Honoree artist Laura Freeman.
Jane Addams Pioneer of Social Justice
by Cornelia MeigsJane Addams, the first women to receive the Nobel Peace prize, was a vivid example of the influence that can be achieved through courage, perseverance, personal integrity and respect for others regardless of social status. Not only is this book an interesting historical narrative, but it carefully reminds the reader of unsuitable urban living and working conditions of the past as it traces the development of social attitudes now taken for granted.
Jane Addams Children’s Book Award Winner
Journey of the Sparrows
by Fran Leeper BussMaria and her brother and sister, Salvadoran refugees, are smuggled into the United States in crates and try to eke out a living in Chicago with the help of a sympathetic family.
Julián Is a Mermaid
by Jessica LoveIn an exuberant picture book, a glimpse of costumed mermaids leaves one boy flooded with wonder and ready to dazzle the world.
While riding the subway home from the pool with his abuela one day, Julián notices three women spectacularly dressed up. Their hair billows in brilliant hues, their dresses end in fishtails, and their joy fills the train car. When Julián gets home, daydreaming of the magic he’s seen, all he can think about is dressing up just like the ladies in his own fabulous mermaid costume: a periwinkle curtain for his tail, the fronds of a potted fern for his headdress. But what will Abuela think about the mess he makes — and even more importantly, what will she think about how Julián sees himself? Mesmerizing and full of heart, Jessica Love’s author-illustrator debut is a jubilant picture of self-love and a radiant celebration of individuality.
Kids at Work
by Russell FreedmanLewis Hine's photographs expose the chilling reality of the inhumane working conditions American children endured during the early twentieth century. Hines's photographs of children at work were so devastating that they convinced the American people that Congress must pass child labor laws.
Land of the Cranes
by Aida SalazarNine-year-old Betita knows she is a crane. Papi has told her the story, even before her family fled to Los Angeles to seek refuge from cartel wars in Mexico. The Aztecs came from a place called Aztlan, what is now the Southwest US, called the land of the cranes. They left Aztlan to establish their great city in the center of the universe-Tenochtitlan, modern-day Mexico City. It was prophesized that their people would one day return to live among the cranes in their promised land. Papi tells Betita that they are cranes that have come home.Then one day, Betita's beloved father is arrested by Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) and deported to Mexico. Betita and her pregnant mother are left behind on their own, but soon they too are detained and must learn to survive in a family detention camp outside of Los Angeles. Even in cruel and inhumane conditions, Betita finds heart in her own poetry and in the community she and her mother find in the camp. The voices of her fellow asylum seekers fly above the hatred keeping them caged, but each day threatens to tear them down lower than they ever thought they could be. Will Betita and her family ever be whole again?
Let Me Play
by Karen BlumenthalIn 1972, Congress passed a modest little law called Title IX, that said any school receiving money from the government couldn't treat boys and girls differently because of their sex. For the first time, girls across the United States got a real chance to play on the athletic field and that little law took on a role far greater than anyone ever imagined it could.
The Little Fishes
by Erik Christian HaugaardThe story of a twelve-year-old Italian boy who, while suffering under German occupation, struggles to protect his spirit and humanity which was his late mothers only wish.
A Long Hard Journey
by Patricia C. Mckissack and Fredrick L. Mckissack"An exciting labor history . . . an excellent introduction to the subject". --School Library Journal.
Coretta Scott King Award winner.
A Long Walk to Water
by Linda Sue ParkA Long Walk to Water begins as two stories, told in alternating sections, about a girl in Sudan in 2008 and a boy in Sudan in 1985.
The girl, Nya, is fetching water from a pond that is two hours' walk from her home: she makes two trips to the pond every day. The boy, Salva, becomes one of the "lost boys" of Sudan, refugees who cover the African continent on foot as they search for their families and for a safe place to stay. Enduring every hardship from loneliness to attack by armed rebels to contact with killer lions and crocodiles, Salva is a survivor, and his story goes on to intersect with Nya's in an astonishing and moving way.
Based on the life of Salva Dut, who, after emigrating to America in 1996, began a project to dig water wells in Sudan.
Jane Addams Children’s Book Award Winner
Looking Out
by Victoria BoutisThough pleased to be part of the "in" crowd at her new school, Ellen's growing awareness of her parents' social concerns, expressed in their support of the condemned Rosenbergs, forces her to make a choice about what really matters in life.
The Lost Year
by Katherine MarshFrom the author of Nowhere Boy - called “a resistance novel for our times” by The New York Times - comes a brilliant middle-grade survival story that traces a harrowing family secret back to the Holodomor, a terrible famine that devastated Soviet Ukraine in the 1930s.
Thirteen-year-old Matthew is miserable. His journalist dad is stuck overseas indefinitely, and his mom has moved in his one-hundred-year-old great-grandmother to ride out the pandemic, adding to his stress and isolation.
But when Matthew finds a tattered black-and-white photo in his great-grandmother’s belongings, he discovers a clue to a hidden chapter of her past, one that will lead to a life-shattering family secret. Set in alternating timelines that connect the present-day to the 1930s and the US to the USSR, Katherine Marsh’s latest novel sheds fresh light on the Holodomor – the horrific famine that killed millions of Ukrainians, and which the Soviet government covered up for decades.
An incredibly timely, page-turning story of family, survival, and sacrifice, inspired by Marsh’s own family history, The Lost Year is perfect for fans of Ruta Sepetys' Between Shades of Gray and Alan Gratz's Refugee.
Malala's Magic Pencil
by Malala Yousafzai and KerascoetNobel Peace Prize winner and New York Times bestselling author Malala Yousafzai's first picture book, inspired by her own childhood.
Malala's first picture book will inspire young readers everywhere to find the magic all around them.
As a child in Pakistan, Malala made a wish for a magic pencil. She would use it to make everyone happy, to erase the smell of garbage from her city, to sleep an extra hour in the morning.
But as she grew older, Malala saw that there were more important things to wish for. She saw a world that needed fixing. And even if she never found a magic pencil, Malala realized that she could still work hard every day to make her wishes come true.
This beautifully illustrated volume tells Malala's story for a younger audience and shows them the worldview that allowed Malala to hold on to hope even in the most difficult of times.
Jane Addams Children's Book Award Medal Winner
The Mangrove Tree
by Susan L. Roth and Cindy TrumboreFor a long time, the people of Hargigo, a village in the tiny African country of Eritrea, were living without enough food for themselves and their animals. Then along came a scientist, Dr. Gordon Sato, who helped to change their lives for the better. And it all started by planting some special mangrove trees. This fascinating story of environmental innovation is a celebration of creativity, hard work and the ability of one man to make a positive difference in the lives of many.
Many Smokes, Many Moons
by Jamake HighwaterWith emphasis on the tribes in North America, this book uses the art and artifacts of various Indian cultures to illustrate events affecting their history from earliest times through 1973.
Marching For Freedom
by Elizabeth PartridgeAn inspiring look at the fight for the vote, by an award-winning author Only 44 years ago in the U.S., Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was leading a fight to win blacks the right to vote. Ground zero for the movement became Selma, Alabama. Award-winning author Elizabeth Partridge leads you straight into the chaotic, passionate, and deadly three months of protests that culminated in the landmark march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965. Focusing on the courageous children who faced terrifying violence in order to march alongside King, this is an inspiring look at their fight for the vote. Stunningly emotional black-and-white photos accompany the text.
Jane Addams Children’s Book Award Winner