Give Peace a Chance

Was there ever a time when books about peace and social justice were more wanted or needed by teachers, librarians, and families? Of the thousands of books published each year for children and teens, a small number of them excel in addressing these serious themes and topics. A select few of those do so with literary and artistic distinction.

Since 1953, the Jane Addams Children's Book Awards selection committees have worked to bring attention to those outstanding books that most effectively promote the cause of peace, social justice, and world community.

These awards are sponsored by the Jane Addams Peace Association, founded in 1948 as the educational affiliate of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). JAPA seeks to 'foster a better understanding between the people of the world toward the end that wars may be avoided and a more lasting peace enjoyed.' WILPF was founded in 1915 with Jane Addams, later the first woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize (1931), as its first president. For more information about these organizations, send e-mail to japa@igc.org. For a complete listing of the Award winners from past years, visit www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/addams/list.htm.

Members of the Jane Addams Children's Book Awards jury span the nation geographically, from Florida to Massachusetts to Alaska. We exchange comments about books in all genres via e-mail, faxed messages, and U.S. mail. Some of us have developed local or regional WILPF reading groups to assist us in the evaluation process. My group in Wisconsin is composed of teachers, social workers, child psychologists, early childhood educators, librarians, mothers, grandmothers, aunts, and friends of children and teenagers. Committee members consider books that show how problems can be solved nonviolently or give examples of how prejudice can be overcome. We look for titles that deal with conflict resolution and those that clarify issues concerning human rights. We value books about women and girls who can serve as role models and appreciate books that show ways in which people of varying races, cultures, and nations can live together. We also seek titles that invite creative thinking about injustice--past or present, real or fictionalized--and invite discussion about racism, sexism, homophobia, or concerns of people who are physically challenged. Peace advocates do not all think alike, but we ultimately arrive at a consensus. Finally, we vote by ranking our first-, second- and third-choice books in each of the two categories--Picture Books and Books for Older Children.

Beverley Naidoo's The Other Side of Truth (HarperCollins, 2001) was the winner in the 'Books for Older Children' category. This suspenseful story involves two Nigerian children, a 12-year-old girl and her younger brother. Their journalist father has consistently refused to back down from his political writing, regardless of threats. When his enemies assassinate his wife in front of the family home in Lagos, Sade and Femi are smuggled out of the country, but the woman paid to escort them to their uncle in London abandons them. Sade realizes that it is best not to reveal their identities to anyone, even to someone who might try to help. They're placed in one foster home and then another before being reunited with their father. Real-life individuals and political situations are woven within this deftly written, unflinching novel. The words of Sade's parents ring in her head amid the nightmare: 'Bad men succeed when the rest of us look the other way.' Naidoo invites readers to look squarely at the real nature of truth, and--perhaps--at present-day struggles for justice and human rights in many nations. 'Truth keeps the hands cleaner than soap.'

Naidoo was born in South Africa, and now lives in England. She's keenly aware that her 'own friends from Nigeria who had always held out hope for South Africa were seeing their own country crushed by a military dictatorship.' That's the premise upon which she began to examine in fiction some of what can happen to political refugees of all ages seeking safety in England. Having experienced censorship herself in South Africa, she points out that '...we need more questions about what it is we are doing to each other and ourselves,' stating that The Other Side of Truth was 'not written in an ivory tower, nor was it meant to be read in one.' The author remembers reading The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank when she was a child. That 'voice of sanity in the midst of insanity' speaks to her 'even more powerfully now,' making her even more convinced that 'literature--the ultimate power of words--can still provide us with hope....'

Rachna Gilmore's A Group of One (Holt, 2001) was named an honor book. Tara Mehta, 15, struggles to be seen as a 'regular' Canadian, rather than being labeled by her peers and teachers by the color of her skin, or her 'diverse' heritage. Her neatly constructed self-image is challenged head-on during her paternal grandmother's visit. Arriving from India, Naniji is shocked to find that her grandchildren are growing up as middle-class Canadians with little knowledge of their family's culture and history. Tara has previously known Naniji only from photos and vague family stories about her activism during the Indian Independence movement. Written in first person, with lively language, this novel explores adolescent ambiguity in a believable plot about a high-spirited teen torn between generations and cultures. Readers also learn about a significant period of history in India, as well as social justice issues and activism.

Gilmore herself was born in India and now lives in Ottawa. She feels strongly that everyone's 'stories need to be woven into the mainstream, to be part of the whole, so that they are not... stories about 'others' but embraced and included as stories about 'us,' all of us together, a group of one.'

Virginia Euwer Wolff's True Believer (Atheneum, 2001) was also awarded an honor citation. LaVaughn, 15, is living close to the economic edge with her prideful mother who frugally saves for her daughter's college fund. Childhood girlfriends are drifting away due to their involvement in a fly-by-night religious group. Her mother begins dating Lester, a man readers can almost immediately sense is up to no good. LaVaughn becomes infatuated with a boy she has known off and on for years. He wants to be her friend, but his crush is on someone else--a boy. LaVaughn's science lab partner is a devout Catholic raised by nuns he adores. In this urban high school of outdated textbooks and broken equipment, one teacher aims to teach students to reach for the best in themselves with high expectations and the motto, 'Rise to the occasion, which is life.'

The second book in what is to be a trilogy, True Believer is a powerful, first-person narrative that stands alone. Wolff raises critical questions here, themes rarely approached in an open-ended way in fiction for young people. While writing True Believer, Wolff says that she kept an index card beside her, a 'sort of guideline, my own private homework for making the book. It said, 'You get what you settle for.''

The winner in the 'Picture Book' category is Doreen Rappaport's Martin's Big Words: The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., illustrated by Bryan Collier (Hyperion, 2001). Rappaport skillfully shaped an amazing amount of information into an accessible sequence for young children without glossing over the tough facts about her subject's life and death. The 'big words' from the book's title are Dr. King's own, drawn from his many speeches and writings and appear in a larger type size than the narrative.

Collier's artwork, rendered using watercolor and cut-paper collage, draws upon his experience as a successful muralist. His large, arresting images offer the necessary intellectual and visual scope for an ambitious book bringing Dr. King's words to life in powerful new ways.  

Vera B. Williams's Amber Was Brave, Essie Was Smart, illustrated by the author (Greenwillow, 2001), was named an honor book. Williams's manuscript began as a prose narrative. She knew that countless children in the nation's towns and cities have relatives or family friends who are or have been jailed. She's aware that this is often a big family secret, and that the children involved can be confused about why a beloved adult is locked up. However, the prose didn't work. Years later, Williams jotted down essentially the same story in short, unrhymed poems within a continuing narrative about Amber and Essie, who rely on one another while their exhausted, depressed mother is at work. The girls play together, help one another, and try to cope with the absence of their father, who is incarcerated. Amber asks, 'Tell me just one more time, Essie. Where is Daddy?' The poems are preceded and followed by an album of artwork rendered in colored pencils. Drawings throughout this unconventional picture book were created with a black pencil. The sisters are each first glimpsed from the back in portraits suggesting that readers might discover more by paying attention to Amber's and Essie's body language and maybe even to the language of their hearts. Williams checked sentimentality at the door as she created memorable scenes in which love and the human spirit become the emotional furniture where Amber, Essie, and young readers can rest.

In 1920, when women in the United States gained the right to vote, Jane Addams was quoted as saying, 'What has maintained the human race on this old globe... if not faith in new possibilities, and the courage to advocate [for] them?' The 'big words' and powerful images in books brought to visibility through the Jane Addams Children's Book Awards process offer adults the courage and intention to find ways to bring excellent books expressing themes of peace and social justice to the attention of young readers in our professional and personal lives. Faith in new possibilities? Yes! Strength to rise to the occasion, which is life? Yes!