Special Collections
Jane Addams Children's Book Award Winners
- Table View
- List View
Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom
by Susan Buckley and Lynda Blackmon Lowery and Elspeth Leacock and Pj LoughranA memoir of the Civil Rights Movement from one of its youngest heroes
As the youngest marcher in the 1965 voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Albama, Lynda Blackmon Lowery proved that young adults can be heroes. Jailed eleven times before her fifteenth birthday, Lowery fought alongside Martin Luther King, Jr. for the rights of African-Americans. In this memoir, she shows today's young readers what it means to fight nonviolently (even when the police are using violence, as in the Bloody Sunday protest) and how it felt to be part of changing American history.
Straightforward and inspiring, this beautifully illustrated memoir brings readers into the middle of the Civil Rights Movement, complementing Common Core classroom learning and bringing history alive for young readers.
Winner of the Sibert Honor
Jane Addams Children’s Book Award Winner
Separate Is Never Equal
by Duncan Tonatiuh
Almost 10 years before Brown vs. Board of Education, Sylvia Mendez and her parents helped end school segregation in California.
An American citizen of Mexican and Puerto Rican heritage who spoke and wrote perfect English, Mendez was denied enrollment to a "Whites only" school.
Her parents took action by organizing the Hispanic community and filing a lawsuit in federal district court.
Their success eventually brought an end to the era of segregated education in California.
2015 Jane Addams Younger Reader Award,
2015 Pura Belpré Illustrator Honor Book
2015 Robert F. Sibert Honor Book
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
Brave Girl
by Michelle MarkelFrom acclaimed author Michelle Markel and Caldecott Honor artist Melissa Sweet comes this true story of Clara Lemlich, a young Ukrainian immigrant who led the largest strike of women workers in U. S. history.
Sugar
by Jewell Parker RhodesTen-year-old Sugar lives on the River Road sugar plantation along the banks of the Mississippi. Slavery is over, but laboring in the fields all day doesn't make her feel very free.
Thankfully, Sugar has a knack for finding her own fun, especially when she joins forces with forbidden friend Billy, the white plantation owner's son.
Sugar has always yearned to learn more about the world, and she sees her chance when Chinese workers are brought in to help harvest the cane.
The older River Road folks feel threatened, but Sugar is fascinated. As she befriends young Beau and elder Master Liu, they introduce her to the traditions of their culture, and she, in turn, shares the ways of plantation life.
Sugar soon realizes that she must be the one to bridge the cultural gap and bring the community together.
Here is a story of unlikely friendships and how they can change our lives forever.
From Jewell Parker Rhodes, the author of Ninth Ward (a Coretta Scott King Honor Book and a Today show Al's Book Club for Kids pick), here's another tale of a strong, spirited young girl who rises beyond her circumstances and inspires others to work toward a brighter future.
Each Kindness
by Jacqueline Woodson and E. B. LewisEach kindness makes the world a little better. Chloe and her friends won't play with the new girl, Maya.
Maya is different--she wears hand-me-downs and plays with old-fashioned toys.
Every time Maya tries to join Chloe and her gang, they reject her.
Eventually, Maya plays alone, and then stops coming to school altogether.
When Chloe's teacher gives a lesson about how even small acts of kindness can change the world, Chloe is stung by the lost opportunity for friendship, and thinks about how much better it could have been if she'd shown a little kindness toward Maya.
This unforgettable book is written and illustrated by the award-winning team that created The Other Side and the Caldecott Honor winner Coming On Home Soon.
With its powerful message and striking art, it will resonate with readers long after they've put it down.
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.
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.
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.
Emma's Poem
by Linda GlaserGive me your tired, your poor
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free...
Who wrote these words? And why?
In 1883, Emma Lazarus, deeply moved by an influx of immigrants from Eastern Europe, wrote a sonnet that was to give voice to the Statue of Liberty. Originally a gift from France to celebrate our shared national struggles for liberty, the Statue, thanks to Emma's poem, slowly came to shape our hearts, defining us as a nation that welcomes and gives refuge to those who come to our shores.
Jane Addams Children's Book 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
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.
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
Planting the Trees of Kenya
by Claire A. NivolaWangari Maathai, winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize and founder of the Green Belt Movement, grew up in the highlands of Kenya, where fig trees cloaked the hills, fish filled the streams, and the people tended their bountiful gardens. But over many years, as more and more land was cleared, Kenya was transformed. When Wangari returned home from college in America, she found the village gardens dry, the people malnourished, and the trees gone. How could she alone bring back the trees and restore the gardens and the people? Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature, says: “Wangari Maathai’s epic story has never been told better—-everyone who reads this book will want to plant a tree!” With glowing watercolor illustrations and lyrical prose, Claire Nivola tells the remarkable story of one woman’s effort to change the fate of her land by teaching many to care for it. An author’s note provides further information about Wangari Maathai and the Green Belt Movement. In keeping with the theme of the story, the book is printed on recycled paper.
The Surrender Tree
by Margarita EngleIt is 1896. Cuba has fought three wars for independence and still is not free. People have been rounded up in reconcentration camps with too little food and too much illness. Rosa is a nurse, but she dares not go to the camps. So she turns hidden caves into hospitals for those who know how to find her.
Black, white, Cuban, Spanish—Rosa does her best for everyone. Yet who can heal a country so torn apart by war? Acclaimed poet Margarita Engle has created another breathtaking portrait of Cuba.
The Surrender Tree is a 2009 Newbery Honor Book, the winner of the 2009 Pura Belpre Medal for Narrative and the 2009 Bank Street - Claudia Lewis Award, and a 2009 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.
The Escape of Oney Judge
by Emily Arnold MccullyWhen General George Washington is elected the first President of the United States, his wife chooses young Oney Judge, a house slave who works as a seamstress at Mount Vernon, to travel with her to the nation's capital in New York City as her personal maid. When the capital is moved to Philadelphia, the Washingtons and Oney move, too, and there Oney meets free blacks for the first time. At first Oney can't imagine being free - she depends on the Washingtons for food, warmth, and clothing. But then Mrs. Washington tells Oney that after her death she will be sent to live with Mrs. Washington's granddaughter. Oney is horrified because she knows it is likely that she will then be sold to a stranger - the worst fate she can imagine. Oney realizes she must run.
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.
A Place Where Sunflowers Grow
by Amy Lee-TaiWhile she and her family are interned at Topaz Relocation Center during World War II, Mari gradually adjusts as she enrolls in an art class, makes a friend, plants sunflowers and waits for them to grow.
Weedflower
by Cynthia KadohataTwelve-year-old Sumiko feels her life has been made up of two parts: before Pearl Harbor and after it. The good part and the bad part. Raised on a flower farm in California, Sumiko is used to being the only Japanese girl in her class. Even when the other kids tease her, she always has had her flowers and family to go home to. That all changes after the horrific events of Pearl Harbor. Other Americans start to suspect that all Japanese people are spies for the emperor, even if, like Sumiko, they were born in the United States! As suspicions grow, Sumiko and her family find themselves being shipped to an internment camp in one of the hottest deserts in the United States. The vivid color of her previous life is gone forever, and now dust storms regularly choke the sky and seep into every crack of the military barrack that is her new "home." Sumiko soon discovers that the camp is on an Indian reservation and that the Japanese are as unwanted there as they'd been at home. But then she meets a young Mohave boy who might just become her first real friend...if he can ever stop being angry about the fact that the internment camp is on his tribe's land. With searing insight and clarity, Newbery Medal-winning author Cynthia Kadohata explores an important and painful topic through the eyes of a young girl who yearns to belong. Weedflower is the story of the rewards and challenges of a friendship across the racial divide, as well as the based-on-real-life story of how the meeting of Japanese Americans and Native Americans changed the future of both.
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.
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.
Selavi, That Is Life
by Youme Landowne"Not so long ago and not so far away, people with guns could take a family, burn a house and disappear, leaving a small child alone in the world. " So begins the true story of Selavi, a small boy who finds himself on the streets of Haiti.
Selavi finds other street children who share their food and a place to sleep with him. Together they proclaim a message of hope through murals and radio programs. Youme is an artist and activist who has worked with communities in Kenya, Japan, Haiti and Cuba to make art which honors personal and cultural wisdom.
Jane Addams Children’s Book Award Winner
With Courage and Cloth
by Ann BausumFor grades 5 and up. With Courage and Cloth tells the story of how women fought for and won the right to vote in the United States. Over the course of seven compelling, fact-filled chapters-"Parade," "Rights," "Momentum," "Protest," "Prison," "Action," and "Victory"-the story of a brave struggle unfolds, showing how women used the democratic system that excluded them in order to become full voting citizens of their nation. The book starts with basic history on the struggle for women's rights, other groups' battles for the vote, and background on the 19th-century women's suffrage movement before focusing on the ultimately successful 20th century efforts to enfranchise women. It details and illustrates the political lobbying and public protests organized by women's groups led by suffragists like Alice Paul and the backlash against these efforts, including intimidation, imprisonment, hunger strikes, and forced feeding of prisoners. The book explains how support for women's suffrage grew, leading to the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1919, and the battle to get it ratified by three-fourths of the nation's 48 states. An afterword includes a discussion of the evolution of voting rights and women's rights since 1920, including the efforts to pass an equal rights amendment. This political struggle for equal rights under the law makes for an exciting story that demonstrates democracy in action and how people have worked to improve the system.
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.
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.