Youths4Peace

2007
Jane Addams
Award Books

2007 Jane Addams Awards

Award Book for Older Children

Kadohata, Cynthia  Weedflower   Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2006.  ISBN:  0689865749.

Weedflower begins in December 1941. From the moment twelve-year-old Sumiko is turned away from a classmate’s birthday party because she is Japanese-American throughout her family’s subsequent internment, she responds to the injustices with disbelief, ambivalence, energy and hope. At Poston, an internment camp on the Mohave Indian reservation, her passion for growing flowers sustains her and a surprising friendship with a Mohave boy pushes her to face her own uncertain future with confidence.  Gr. 7 & up.

Honor Books for Older Children

Freedman, Russell. Freedom Walkers: The Story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott Holiday House, 2006.  ISBN:  0823420310.

Masterfully written, complete with black-and-white photographs from the time period, Russell Freedman captures the events and people who created the poignant beginnings of the Civil Rights Movement called the Montgomery Bus Boycott.   Gr. 6 & up.

Winthrop, Elizabeth. Counting on Grace. Wendy Lamb Books, an imprint of Random House Books, 2006.  ISBN:  0385746441.

Forced to leave school, a French-Canadian girl joins her family working in the mills of Vermont in the early 1900’s. With the support of a local teacher and incognito child-labor activist and photographer Lewis Hine, she sees the world beyond the boundaries of the mill and realizes the power of literacy to effect change.  Gr. 7 & up.

 Award Book for Younger Children

Lee-Tai, Amy. Illustrated by Felicia Hoshino. A Place Where Sunflowers Grow. Children's Book Press, 2006. ISBN: 0892392150.

Using Amy Lee-Tai's mother's experiences in a Japanese Internment Camp, this bilingual story told in Japanese and English centers on a young child’s quiet confusion in the disorienting surroundings of the desert camp while emphasizing on the arts, family and friendship as sources of strength in the face of injustice. Not easily, but with time, patience and care, hope can be fostered in even the harshest circumstances.  Gr. 3 & up.

 Honor Books for Younger Children

Tingle, Tim. Illustrated by Jeanne Rorex Bridges. Crossing Bok Chitto: A Choctaw Tale of Friendship & Freedom. Cinco Puntos Press, 2006.  ISBN: 0938317776.

The Choctaw people live on one side of the river Bok Chitto while plantation owners and African American slaves live on the other. A secret friendship between a Choctaw girl and an African-American boy is the first link in a chain of humanity that spirits the boy’s family across the river to freedom. The folk tale is a tribute to the Choctaws and Indians of every nation who aided African Americans running from slavery.  Gr. 3 & up.

Raven, Margot Thesis. Illustrated by E. B. Lewis Night Boat to Freedom Melanie Kroupa Books, 2007.  ISBN: 0374312664.

In danger and darkness, an enslaved African-American boy repeatedly risks his life to row others across the river to Ohio and freedom.  Gr. 4 & up.

2006

2008 in progress