Welcome to the first annual Black History Month Hop hosted by Reflections of a Bookaholic and Mocha Girls Read a month long blogging event which focuses on giving black authors, books, and those who support them a month in the spotlight.
For the last week of the hop we have a few things planned for you. What’s a hop you ask? At the bottom of each post you will find a list of other sites participating in the hop. This way you can easily hop from one blog to another.
Weekly Topics for the Black History Month Hop
1st – 7th Black History Month Giveaway Hop
2nd – 4th Around Town
5th – 11th The Business of Black Books
12th – 18th Black Love
19th – 25th Black Books
26th – 29th The Best of…
We have a lot of giveaways going on right now from great Black authors. All winners will be announced on 2/29/2012.
Stephanie Norris’ “Trouble in Paradise” (End 2/28)
Earnessa T Carter’s “32 Candles” (Ends 2/28)
This is the week we will talk about the best of books by Black authors or with Black character.
The Best of Black Children Books
(a little something for our little Mocha Girls)
2012 Coretta Scott King Book Award Recipients
Author Award Winner
Kadir Nelson, author and illustrator of “Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans” (Balzer + Bray, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers). “Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans” is an extensive volume focusing on American history as it intertwines with the lives of African Americans. The story is told from the viewpoint of an elderly woman who shares her life story while highlighting pivotal historical events including abolition, the Great Migration, World War II, and the Civil Rights movement.
Illustrator Award Winner
Shane W. Evans, illustrator of “Underground: Finding the Light to Freedom” (A Neal Porter Book, published by Roaring Brook Press, a division of Holtzbrinck Publishing Holdings Limited Partnership). Effective interplay of dark and light—dark blues and greens that represent fear and oppression; bright golds that signal the joy of freedom—characterizes this portrayal of a band of slaves’ nighttime escape. They run, rest, get help from others, and finally celebrate their hard-won liberation.
Author Honor
Eloise Greenfield, “The Great Migration: Journey to the North,” illustrated by Jan Spivey Gilchrist and published by Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
Patricia C. McKissack, “Never Forgotten,” illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon and published by Schwartz & Wade Books, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc.
Illustrator Honor
Kadir Nelson, author and illustrator of “Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans,” published by Balzer + Bray, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
Coretta Scott King – Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement
Ashley Bryan, storyteller, artist, author, poet, and musician whose numerous awards include the Coretta Scott King Book Award for “Let it Shine” and “Beautiful Blackbird.” Bryan was born in Harlem and raised in the Bronx. His father worked as a printer of greeting cards. He loved birds. Bryan once counted a hundred caged birds in his childhood home. Bryan grew up with six brothers and sisters and three cousins. Bryan recalled his childhood in New York the 1930s as an idyllic time, full of art and music. He excelled in school, graduating from high school at the age sixteen.
Bryan attended the Cooper Union Art School, one of the few African-American students at that time to be awarded a scholarship. He had applied to other schools who had rejected him on the basis of race,but Cooper Union administered its scholarships in a blind test: “You put your work in a tray, sculpture, drawing, painting, and it was judged. They never saw you. If you met the requirements, tuition was free, and it still is to this day,” explained Bryan.
At the age of nineteen, World War II interrupted his studies. He was drafted and assigned to serve as a porter in Europe. He was so ill-suited to this work that his fellow soldiers often encouraged him to step aside and draw. He always kept a sketch pad in his gas mask.
When he returned to New York, he exhibited the drawings he’d made as a soldier. He then went on to Columbia University to study philosophy. He wanted to understand war. After the war, Bryan received a Fulbright Scholarship to study in Europe.
Bryan taught art at Queen’s College, Lafayette College, and Dartmouth College. He retired as emeritus professor of art at Dartmouth in the 1980s.
He was not published until he was forty years old. In 1962, he was the first African American to publish a children’s book as an author and illustrator. “I never gave up. Many were more gifted than I but they gave up. They dropped out. What they faced out there in the world–they gave up.”
Honors
His books have won several awards in children’s literature, including the Coretta Scott King Award, the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award from the Pennsylvania State University, and the Lupine Award from the Maine Library Association. Bryan himself also received the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal for achievement in children’s literature and the University of Southern Mississippi Medallion from the Fay B. Kaigler Children’s Book Festival.
- 1981 Coretta Scott King Award Winner for outstanding illustration in Beat the Story Drum, Pum-Pum
- 1983 Coretta Scott King Award Honor for outstanding illustration in I’m Going to Sing: Black American Spirituals
- 1987 Coretta Scott King Award Honor for outstanding author in Lion and the Ostrich Chicks and Other African Folk Tales
- 1987 Coretta Scott King Award Honor for outstanding illustration in Lion and the Ostrich Chicks and Other African Folk Tales
- 1988 Coretta Scott King Award Honor for outstanding illustration in What a Morning! The Christmas Story in Black Spirituals
- 1992 Coretta Scott King Award Honor for outstanding illustration in All Night, All Day: A Child’s First Book of African American Spirituals
- 1998 Coretta Scott King Award Honor for outstanding illustration in Ashley Bryan’s ABC of African American Poetry
- 2004Coretta Scott King Award Winner for outstanding illustration in Beautiful Blackbird
- 2005 The Atlanta literary festival was named for him.
- 2008 Coretta Scott King Award Winner for outstanding illustration in Let it Shine: Three Favorite Spirituals
- 2009 Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal for substantial and lasting contributions to children’s literature
- 2010 Golden Kite Award for nonfiction for Ashley Bryan: Words to My Life’s Song
- 2012 Coretta Scott King–Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement presented to an African American author, illustrator or author/illustrator for a body of his or her published books for children and/or young adults, and who has made a significant and lasting literary contribution.
Congratulations to all of this years winners! All the information on this blog post came from Wikipedia. If you would like to read more about the Coretta Scott King Book Award go to the site here.
CORETTA SCOTT KING BOOK AWARD OFFICIAL WEBSITE
Check out the other blogs and the books they are talking about. Bloggers add your link to the linky as well. One lucky blogger will win a great prize for joining this week.
Mocha Girl Alysia
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