Book Awards Season in Full Bloom
Gryphon goes to Douglas Florian; Golden Kite to Jerry Spinelli; Keats to Jeron Ashford
By Walter Minkel -- School Library Journal, 4/1/2004
The Center for Children's Books at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign created the award to honor the titles that best bridge the gap between picture books and chapter books. The winning author receives a $1,000 prize. For more information, visit www.lis.uiuc.edu/~ccb.
Milkweed (Knopf) by Jerry Spinelli is the winner of the 2003 Golden Kite Award winner for fiction, and Leonardo: Beautiful Dreamer (Dutton) by Robert Byrd is the nonfiction recipient. Breath (S & S/Atheneum) by Donna Jo Napoli was named the Fiction Honor Book and After the Last Dog Died (National Geographic) by Carmen Bredeson the Nonfiction Honor Book.
The Golden Kite Award for Picture Book Text was presented to The Dirty Cowboy (Farrar), written by Amy Timberlake and illustrated by Adam Rex, and the Picture Book Text Honor Book went to On Sand Island (Houghton), written by Jacqueline Briggs Martin and illustrated by David A. Johnson. I Dream of Trains (S & S), illustrated by Loren Long and written by Angela Johnson, won the award for Picture Book Illustration, with Just a Minute (Chronicle) by Yuyi Morales receiving the Honor award. Presented by the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, the Golden Kite is the only children's award voted on by the authors and illustrators of books for young people. For more information, visit www.scbwi.org/awards.htm.
The winner of the 2004 Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Award is Jeron Ashford Frame, author of Yesterday I Had the Blues (Tricycle), illustrated by R. Gregory Christie. The winner of the Keats New Illustrator Award is Gabi Swaitkowska, illustrator of My Name Is Yoon (Farrar/Frances Foster Books), written by Helen Recorvits.
The winners of the awards, sponsored by the New York Public Library and the Ezra Jack Keats Foundation, each receive a medal and a $1,000 cash prize. Information is available at www.ezra-jack-keats.org/programs/nyplawards.htm.
