Author Accolades
By Lisa Von Drasek

For Lisa Von Drasek's latest audiobook recommendations click here

Black History Month is the perfect
opportunity to highlight Coretta Scott King Book Award winners and honor books. This award is presented annually by the Coretta Scott King Committee of the ALAs's Ethnic Multicultural Information Exchange Round Table. It is given to an African American author and an African American illustrator whose books, as stated on the ALA website, "promote understanding and appreciation of the culture of all peoples and their contribution to the realization of the American dream." The award commemorates Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and honors Coretta Scott King for her courage and determination to continue her husband's work. To learn more, go to www.ala.org/ala/emiert/corettascottkingbookawards/corettascott.htm

African American must-reads
Here are just a few recently released, exemplary African American-themed books, most written or illustrated by past Coretta Scott King Book Award winners, that are must-reads this month – and all year round.

M.L.K.: Journey of a King by Tonya Bolden (Abrams, 2007, ISBN: 0-810-95476-1). In this respectful and emotional biography of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the author, who won a 2006 Coretta Scott King Honor for Maritcha: A Nineteenth-Century American Girl (Abrams, 2005, ISBN: 0-810-95045-6), begins with Dr. King's assassination, imagining what he may have thought and felt in those final moments. Bolden writes with intimacy, referring to King as M.L. throughout the text and weaving in his own words to tell the story of his life. We learn of King's mentors in church and in college as well as his philosophical influences like Gandhi. Bolden captures the pain of segregation and the lives that were affected by bigotry and hate.

Henry's Freedom Box: A True Story from the Underground Railroad by Ellen Levine (Scholastic, 2007, ISBN: 0-439-77733-X). Henry Brown was born a slave. He was sold away from his family as a child and was worked hard in his master's Richmond, VA, factory. As an adult, after his family was torn from him, Henry made an ingeniously brave escape by mailing himself in a wooden box across 350 miles to conductors of the Underground Railroad in Philadelphia. Kadir Nelson, who received the 2005 Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award for Ellington Was Not a Street By Ntozake Shange (Simon & Schuster, 2004, ISBN: 0-689-82884-5), depicts Henry's life and environment in stunning detail.

Jesse Owens: Fastest Man Alive by Carole Boston Weatherford (Walker Books for Young Readers, 2006, ISBN: 0-802-79550-1). This tale of the first American track-and-field athlete to win four gold medals in a single Olympics is illustrated by Eric Velasquez, who won the 1999 Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe Award for New Talent for The Piano Man by Debbi Chocolate (Walker Books for Young Readers, 1998, ISBN: 0-802-78646-4). While training and traveling for track meets, Jesse Owens suffered the discomfort and indignities of institutional racism. Despite these obstacles, he earned a place on the United States Olympic team competing in Nazi Germany in 1936. And he won.

Let it Shine: Three Favorite Spirituals by Ashley Bryan (Atheneum, 2007, ISBN: 0-689-84732-7). A 2005 Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award winner for Beautiful Blackbird (Atheneum, 2003, ISBN: 0-689-84731-9), Bryan creates joyous celebrations of three powerful songs. His bold cut-paper collages explode in beams of radiance for "This Little Light of Mine," "Oh, When the Saints Go Marching In" and "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands." In Bryan's endnote he encourages families to "...lift our voices in the celebration of the Spirituals! May the spirit move you to make them your own."

Wind Flyers by Angela Johnson (Simon & Schuster, 2007, ISBN: 0-689-84879-X). A three-time Coretta Scott King Book Award and Honor winner, Johnson tells the story of The Tuskegee Airmen, the first African Americans to fly for the United States. Johnson's spare lyrical language is perfectly paired with Loren Long's dramatic paintings. We witness the struggles of the airmen for training and respect as well as their bravery in the battles of World War II. For a more in-depth look at these pilots and their times, watch for Black and White Airmen:Their True History by John Fleischman, coming in June 2007 from Houghton Mifflin.

John Lewis in the Lead: A Story of the Civil Rights Movement by Jim Haskins and Kathleen Benson (Lee and Low Books, 2006, ISBN: 1-584-30250-X). This is an inspiring picture-book biography of a sharecropper's son who risked his life to participate in the most critical actions of his era. Lewis began his activism while still in high school when he was turned away from the white-only public library. As a college student he organized sit-ins at lunch counters. In 1963, 23-year-old Lewis was the youngest speaker at the March on Washington where Dr. King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech. In 1965, Lewis suffered a serious head injury when protesting the denial of voting rights to African Americans; 21 years later he was elected as a Congressman serving the state of Georgia.

Crossing Bok Chitto: A Choctaw Tale of Friendship and Freedom by Tim Tingle (Cinco Puntos Press, 2006, ISBN: 0-938-31777-6). Acclaimed storyteller Tim Tingle first heard the seeds of this story in song, as sung by a Choctaw tribal elder, of the Choctaw folks who helped runaway slaves traverse the Bok Chitto river by walking across hidden stepping stones. Tingle tells this story through two children who become friends – a young Choctaw girl named Martha Tom and Little Mo, whose family is enslaved.

Night Boat to Freedom by Margot Theis Raven (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2006, ISBN: 0-374-31266-4). The author was inspired to create this story from an account by Arnold Gragston in the WPA's Slave Narrative Collection. This first-person account is of a 12-year-old boy whose Granny Judith encourages him to help others to escape to freedom. Illustrator E.B. Lewis, the 2003 Coretta Scott King winner for Talkin' About Bessie: The Story of Aviator Elizabeth Coleman (Orchard, 2002, ISBN: 0-439-35243-6), depicts in dramatic watercolor paintings John risking his life to ferry runaway slaves.

For Lisa Von Drasek's latest audiobook recommendations click here

Lisa Von Drasek is Children's Librarian at the Bank Street College of Education in New York, NY.

February, 2007, Vol.37, No.5