As everyone knows by now, this is the committee I served on for the past year. I just want to post a little bit about the books that won. I will be adding my personal reviews about many books that were considered in the weeks and months ahead. With over 270 books in the running, that's a lot of writing to do! |
The book is published by Abrams Books for Young Readers, an imprint of ABRAMS.
Funny Bones: Posada and His Day of the Dead Calvaras is about José Guadalupe Posada, the Mexican artist whose iconic Dia de Muertos illustrations are well known to children celebrating or learning about the holiday. Juxtaposing his own artwork with Posada’s art and life, Tonatiuh tells the story of a remarkable man and time in Mexican history.
“Dancing calaveras (skeletons) cavort through this playful biography about the Mexican artist José Guadalupe Posada. In lively art and text, Tonatiuh describes Posada's techniques and the social impact of his vibrant art," said Sibert Medal Committee Chair Elizabeth C. Overmyer.
- Drowned City: Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans written and illustrated by Don Brown and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. "A swirl of unremarkable wind leaves Africa…” and makes its way to what will become the drowned city of New Orleans. Simple black ink lines and dramatic watercolors pull readers into the deep water. Heroes surface, and people find courage, but much in this exceptional graphic novel is about incompetence, racism, and the resilience of the people of the Crescent City.
- The Boys Who Challenged Hitler: Knud Pedersen and the Churchill Club by Phillip Hoose and published by Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers Hoose presents the true World War II story of eight Danish teens who became resistance fighters while most of the adults in their country reacted passively to the Nazi takeover. He and Knud Pedersen, the original organizer of their Churchill Club, extensively conversed in person and via email; Hoose weaves Pedersen’s own words into an adventurous narrative about these young heroes.
- Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom: My Story of the 1965 Selma Voting Rights March written by Lynda Blackmon Lowery as told to Elspeth Leacock and Susan Buckley, illustrated by PJ Loughran and published by Dial Books, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) LLC “By the time I was fifteen years old, I had been in jail nine times.” So begins Lowery’s highly personal account of the historic 1965 voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery. Revealing a dramatic story with diverse visual images, this heroic tale gives voice to activists participating in Civil Rights history.
- Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer, Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement written by Carole Boston Weatherford, illustrated by Ekua Holmes and published by Candlewick Press. This inspirational singer and Civil Rights activist comes to life in 22 brief, first person, free verse poems that seamlessly incorporate Hamer’s own words. This biography takes her from a sharecropping child to a community leader, and is richly illustrated with multimedia collages that perfectly evoke the emotions of each poem.
For more information about the criteria for this award, click the button below.