From: Ginny Moore Kruse <gmkruse>
Date: Tue, 02 Mar 1999 17:40:27 -0600

Thank you for your thoughtful comments during February concerning the Caldecott and Newbery Award winners and the related Honor Books. There are many other things to be said, and I'm sure some of you are saying some of them to each other!

While we were conversing on CCBC-Net last month, someone who signed up for CCBC-Net became the one thousandth member of the CCBC-Net community! Welcome to everyone who signed up during February! One of you tipped the population of the CCBC-Net community into four digits!


We'll all learn more about Snowflake Bentley and Holes when we can read the award acceptance speeches or maybe even hear them this summer. Watch the July/August issue of The Horn Book Magazine for fine biographical essays about Mary Azarian and Louis Sachar accompanying their reprinted award acceptance speeches. You'll also find those speeches in the Summer issue of ALA's Journal of Youth Services in Libaries (JOYS). You will hear the speeches in person if you attend the ALA/ALSC Newbery/Caldecott Banquet on Sunday evening, June 27, in New Orleans.

There is more than one award event during the American Library Association's annual conference each summer. The Coretta Scott King Awards Breakfast is another high point of that conference. This awards breakfast always takes place on Tuesday morning during the conference, and in 1999, the date is June 29, also in New Orleans.

Now let's turn our attention to the books that won the 1999 Coretta Scott King Awards and the Honor Books in each category. The entire list is reprinted below for your convenience as we think about these books between now and March 15.

Some related CSK award news concerns The Coretta Scott King John L. Steptoe Awards honoring beginning authors and illustrators. This honor was formerly named the New Talent Award, and when Sharon Draper won the first such award, it was then called the Genesis Award. The award name has finally settled down as the Coretta Scott King Task Force first dreamed it might. The 1999 CSK John L. Steptoe author award will be presented to Sharon Flake for The Skin I'm In. This honor to The Skin I'm In also happens to bring visibility to a new publishing venture during 1999: Jump at the Sun, an imprint of Hyperion edited by Andrea Davis Pinkney and devoted to books by African American book creators.

Have you read the novel The Skin I'm In? If so, please share your comments with all of us. I also invite comments at this time about the CSK Award and Honor Books for Illustrator: I See the Rhythm; The Bat Boy and His Violin; I Have Heard of a Land; and Duke Ellington. (see below)

Who has had a chance to see, read, or use any of the above books? Please share your responses to any of them with us ... Ginny

1999 SRRT Coretta Scott King Author Award (outstanding writing by a black author)

Heaven by Angela Johnson (Simon & Schuster, 1998)
         Three 1999 SRRT Coretta Scott King Author Honor Books

1) Jazmin's Notebook by Nikki Grimes (Dial, 1998)

2) Breaking Ground/Breaking Silence: The Story of New York's African Burial Ground (nonfiction) by Joyce Hansen & Gary McGowan Henry Holt, 1998)

3) The Other Side: Shorter Poems by Angela Johnson (Orchard Books, 1998)

1999 SRRT Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award (outstanding illustrations by a black artist)

I See the Rhythm illustrated by Michele Wood, written by Toyomi Igus
(Children's Book Press, 1998)
         Three 1999 SRRT Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor Books

1) I Have Heard of a Land illustrated by Floyd Cooper, written by Joyce Carol Thomas (Joanna Cotler Books/HarperCollins, 1998)

2) The Bat Boy & His Violin illustrated by E.B. Lewis, written by Gavin Curtis (Simon & Schuster, 1998)
         3) Duke Ellington: The Piano Prince and His Orchestra illustrated by Brian Pinkney, written by Andrea Davis Pinkney (Hyperion, 1998)

1999 SRRT Coretta Scott King John L. Steptoe Award (outstanding book by a new black author and/or illustrator)
         Author: The Skin I'm In by Sharon G. Flake (Jump at the Sun/Hyperion, 1998)

Illustrator: The Piano Man illustrated by Eric Velasquez, written by Debbi Chocolate (Walker and Company, 1998)

Ginny Moore Kruse (gmkruse at ccbc.soemadison.wisc.edu) Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC) A Library of the School of Education Unversity of Wisconsin - Madison Break hours: Monday - Saturday 9:00a.m. - 4:00 p.m. (CST)
Received on Tue 02 Mar 1999 05:40:27 PM CST