Curiouser & Curiouser
The Sydney Taylor Book Awards - 2009
Richard Michelson and Raul Colon, author and illustrator of As Good As Anybody: Martin Luther King, Jr. and Abraham Joshua Heschel’s Amazing March Toward Freedom, Karen Hesse, author of Brooklyn Bridge, and Valerie Zenatti, author of A Bottle in the Gaza Sea, are the 2009 winners of the prestigious Sydney Taylor Book Award.
The Sydney Taylor Book Award honors new books for children and teens that exemplify the highest literary standards while authentically portraying the Jewish experience. The award memorializes Sydney Taylor, author of the classic All-of-a-Kind Family series. The winners will receive their awards at the Association of Jewish Libraries convention in Chicago this July.
Michelson and Colon will receive the 2009 gold medal in the Sydney Taylor Book Award’s Younger Readers Category for As Good As Anybody: Martin Luther King, Jr. and Abraham Joshua Heschel’s Amazing March Toward Freedom, published by Alfred A. Knopf. Two very special clergymen, one a rabbi, the other an African-American reverend are raised in divergently different countries yet experience similar levels of persecution and bigotry that will one day bring them together. As colleagues in America’s struggle for civil rights, they march together from Selma to Montgomery in March 1965. Colon’s colored pencil and watercolor illustrations offer a beautiful complement to the text, describing two unique paths from childhood to adult life – Martin’s in the rich, warm brown-tones of the American south and Abraham’s in cool blues and grays that reminded the illustrator of old World War II movies. This book is recommended for grades 2-5.
Hesse will receive the 2009 gold medal in the Older Readers Category for Brooklyn Bridge, published by Feiwel & Friends. While his family left the anti-Semitism of Russia to build the American dream, Joey Michtom’s dream is to visit the glittering Coney Island. A true event, the invention of the Teddy Bear in 1903, is used by Hesse to weave multiple themes of hard-work, survival, homelessness, and familial dedication with interlocking and parallel stories of families who live reasonably well opposite those less fortunate in the shadows below the imposing Brooklyn Bridge. This book is recommended for grades 5-8. Hesse also won the 1992 Award for Older Readers for Letters from Rifka, and a 2004 Honor Award for Older Readers for The Cats in Kransinski Square.
Zenatti will receive the 2009 gold medal in the Teen Readers Category for A Bottle in the Gaza Sea, published by Bloomsbury. It is a story about the relationship between an Israeli girl, Tal, and a Palestinian boy, Naim, via e-mail and instant messaging, honestly but hopefully conveys the confusion, anger, exhaustion, and depression felt by many young people during the 2003 intifada. Zenatti’s memoir, When I Was a Soldier, was a 2005-6 AJL Notable Book for Older Readers.
Six Sydney Taylor Honor Books were named for 2009. For Younger Readers, they are Engineer Ari and the Rosh Hashanah Ride by Deborah Bodin Cohen with illustrations by Shahar Kober (Kar-Ben), Sarah Laughs by Jacqueline Jules with illustrations by Natascia Ugliano (Kar-Ben), A is for Abraham: A Jewish Family Alphabet by Richard Michelson with illustrations by Ron Mazellan (Sleeping Bear Press) and Naming Liberty by Jane Yolen with paintings by Jim Burke (Philomel Books). Aranka Siegal’s Memories of Babi (Farrar Straus and Giroux) was named an Honor Book for Older Readers, and Freefall by Anna Levine (Greenwillow Books) was named an Honor Book in the Teen Reader Category.
In addition to the medal-winners, twenty-two Notable Books of Jewish Content for 2009 were alaso named. The full list is available from the AJL's website at http://www.jewishlibraries.org/ajlweb/awards/st_books.htm
Volume 13, Issue 1 The Looking Glass, January/February, 2009
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