Special Collections
Jane Addams Children's Book Award Winners
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The Story Of The Negro
by Arna Bontemps and Raymond LufkinA history of the Negro race, from the early tribes of Africa and empire of Ethiopia, through the practice of slavery in many areas, especially the United States, to early twentieth century achievements of American Negroes.
Jane Addams Children’s Book Award Winner
We've Got A Job
by Cynthia Y. LevinsonWe've Got a Job tells the little-known story of the 4,000 black elementary-, middle-, and high school students who voluntarily went to jail in Birmingham, Alabama, between May 2 and May 11, 1963. Fulfilling Mahatma Gandhi s and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. s precept to fill the jails, they succeeded where adults had failed in desegregating one of the most racially violent cities in America. Focusing on four of the original participants who have participated in extensive interviews, We've Got a Job recounts the astonishing events before, during, and after the Children's March.
Waiting For The Rain
by Sheila GordonThis novel shows the bonds of friendship under the strain of apartheid as two lifelong friends, Tengo and Frikkie, come of age amidst the tragedy of South Africa.
The Breadwinner
by Deborah EllisYoung Parvana lives with her family in one room of a bombed-out apartment building in Kabul, Afghanistan. Because Parvana's father has a foreign education, he is arrested by the Taliban. The family becomes increasingly desperate until Parvana conceives a plan.
Children as Teachers of Peace
by Gerald G. JampolskyThis book by our children is the result of a joyous journey. From the day we were inspired by the realization of the truth in the words "Children as Teachers of Peace"... to the invitation we issued that same week to children throughout the country to express their thoughts and advice about peace... to the day only five weeks later when this book was delivered to the publisher, we have been profoundly moved by the truth our children speak for all of us.
Middle Passage
by Tom Feelings and John Henrik ClarkeThe Middle Passage is the name given to one of the most tragic ordeals in history: the cruel and terrifying journey of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean.
In this seminal work, master artist Tom Feelings tells the complete story of this horrific diaspora in sixty-four extraordinary narrative paintings. Achingly real, they draw us into the lives of the millions of African men, women, and children who were savagely torn from their beautiful homelands, crowded into disease-ridden "death ships", and transported under nightmarish conditions to the so-called New World.
An introduction by noted historian Dr. John Henrik Clarke traces the roots of the Atlantic slave trade and gives a vivid summary of its four centuries of brutality. The Middle Passage reaches us on a visceral level. No one can experience it and remain unmoved. But while we absorb the horror of these images, we also can find some hope in them. They are a tribute to the survival of the human spirit, and the humanity won by the survivors of the Middle Passage belongs to us all.
Winner of the Coretta Scott King Medal
Natural History
by M. B. GoffsteinText and illustrations descibe the riches of the earth and how people can promote peace and goodwill by sharing equitably with each other and their fellow creatures.
Jane Addams Children’s Book Award Winner
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
The Big Book for Peace
by Lloyd Alexander and Yoshiko Uchida and Jean Fritz and Charlotte Zolotow and Natalie Babbitt and John Bierhorst and Thacher Hurd and Steven Kellogg and Myra Cohn Livingston and Lois Lowry and Milton Meltzer and Katherine Paterson and Marilyn Sachs and Mildred Pitts Walter and Nancy Willard and Jean Craighead GeorgeThe wisdom of peace and the absurdity of fighting are demonstrated in seventeen stories and poems by outstanding authors of today such as Jean Fritz, Milton Meltzer, and Nancy Willard.
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.
The Road to Agra
by Armiee SommerfeltThe Road to Agra is a children's novel, written by Aimée Sommerfelt and published in Norwegian in 1959 as Veien til Agra. It is her most famous work and has been translated into 17 other languages. It is a tender story of the love between thirteen-year-old Lalu and his younger sister, Maya, who is seven. Lalu protects his sister and takes care of her needs. His concern for Maya's failing eyesight, the result of a contagious disease called trachoma, prompts Lalu to take his sister on a perilous, three-hundred-mile journey on foot to seek medical help. Lalu's desire to better his situation in life and his unwavering commitment to his goal will inspire young readers.
Jane Addams Children’s Book Award Winner
Paul Robeson (Crowell Biographies)
by Eloise GreenfieldA biography of the black man who became a famous singer, actor, and spokesman for equal rights for his people.
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.
What Then Raman
by Shirley L. AroraA boy in India is the first in his village to learn to read and longs to buy a special book. He comes from a poor country family which has barely enough money to buy food. To earn more money, Raman works gathering plants for an American woman, and learns that with education comes responsibility as well as privilege.
Jane Addams Children’s Book Award Winner
Aunt Harriet's Underground Railroad In The Sky
by Faith RinggoldCassie, who flew above New York in Tar Beach, soars into the sky once more. This time, she and her brother Be Be meet a train full of people, and Be Be joins them. But the train departs before Cassie can climb aboard. With Harriet Tubman as her guide, Cassie retraces the steps escaping slaves took on the real Underground Railroad and is finally reunited with her brother at the story's end.
Jane Addams Children’s Book Award Winner
Sylvia and Aki
by Winifred ConklingAt the start of World War II, Japanese American third-grader Aki and her family are sent to an internment camp in Poston, Arizona, while Mexican American third-grader Sylvia's family leases their Orange County, California, farm and begins a fight to stop school segregation.
We Are One
by Larry Dane BrimnerBayard Rustin's life was dedicated to helping others-fighting injustices and discriminations-so that people could live as one. Protesting segregation long before there was a civil rights movement, he was often arrested for his beliefs and actions. As an organizer, Bayard was largely responsible for bringing people together to walk for freedom and jobs in Washington, D. C., on that memorable summer day, August 28, 1963.
This Land Is My Land
by George LittlechildArtist George Littlechild shows and tells us what it means to be a young Native artist living on the cusp of the 21st century. Giving thanks to the ancestors who have guided him, he documents the struggles of Native peoples and offers us stories of delight, humor and healing.
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.
Taste of Salt
by Frances TempleIn the hospital after being beaten by Macoutes, seventeen-year-old Djo tells the story of his impoverished life to a young woman who, like him, has been working with the social reformer Father Aristide to fight the repression in Haiti.
Meeting with a Stranger
by Duane BradleyCantuffa is a thick thorn bush which once covered much of the land of Ethiopia, preventing any progress until it had been cut away. For this reason an emperor about to make a voyage across the country proclaimed, "Cut down the cantuffa in the four quarters of the world, for I know not where I am going."
This story helps to shack away at some of the thorns which still obscure this nation. It describes the young boy Teffera, left in charge of his family's farm and sheep while his father was undergoing an operation. When a ferangi, an American, came to his small village to help teach new methods of caring for the sheep, Teffera had to decide whether he should accept this advice. His people had had substantial reason to mistrust the Westerners, and he was instilled with pride in own traditions, but on the other hand his flocks were dying.
This book has the dual value of illuminating the character of the Ethiopian peasant and of providing an insight into the problems they must face in adapting to progress while maintaining their national spirit.
Jane Addams Children’s Book Award Winner
Nasreen's Secret School
by Jeanette WinterBased on a true story. After her parents are taken away by the Taliban, young Nasreen stops speaking. But as she spends time in a secret school, she slowly breaks out of her shell.
Rain Of Fire
by Marion Dane BauerWhen Steve's older brother Matthew, returning home after service in World War II, refuses to talk about his wartime experiences, Steve's friends begin to doubt the stories he has told of Matthew's heroism.
Delivering Justice
by Jim HaskinsA respected biographer teams up with an acclaimed artist to tell the story of the mail carrier who orchestrated the Great Savannah Boycott -- and was instrumental in bringing equality to his community. "Grow up and be somebody," Westley Wallace Law's grandmother encouraged him as a young boy living in poverty in segregated Savannah, Georgia. Determined to make a difference in his community, W.W. Law assisted blacks in registering to vote, joined the NAACP and trained protesters in the use of nonviolent civil disobedience, and, in 1961, led the Great Savannah Boycott. In that famous protest, blacks refused to shop in downtown Savannah. When city leaders finally agreed to declare all of its citizens equal, Savannah became the first city in the south to end racial discrimination. A lifelong mail carrier for the U.S. Postal Service, W.W. Law saw fostering communication between blacks and whites as a fundamental part of his job. As this affecting biography makes clear, this "unsung hero" delivered far more than the mail to the citizens of the city he loved.
Stick-in-the-mud
by Jean KetchumTomba was a small boy who lived in a village where all the houses were made of mud. When the rains came every year, all the people sat around in the wet. Tomba had an idea that if the huts were put on sticks, they wouldn't have to be uncomfortable. But the villagers had always lived that way and didn't want to listen to a small boy. But many times a new approach to a problem will solve, and Tomba did.
Jane Addams Children’s Book Award Winner