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Perkins, Raschka Win 2006 Newbery, Caldecott Medals

The writer of a novel about a group of teens who over the course of a summer search for the meaning of life and the illustrator of a story about a girl’s magical visit to her multiracial grandparents’ home were named respective winners of the American Library Association’s Newbery and Caldecott medals honoring children’s literature. The announcement came January 23 at the ALA Midwinter Meeting in San Antonio, Texas.

Lynne Rae Perkins earned the John Newbery medal for Criss Cross, published by Greenwillow Books. The novel, which takes its title from a radio show that neighborhood teens listen to on Saturday nights, is set in a small town in the 1970s and captures the fleeting interactions and subtle perceptions of adolescence.

Chris Raschka took the Randolph Caldecott prize for his lively, expressionistic illustrations in The Hello, Goodbye Window, written by Norman Juster and published by Michael di Capua Books, in which the kitchen window is a gateway to the imagination.

Julius Lester, author of Day of Tears: A Novel in Dialogue, and Bryan Collier, illustrator of Rosa, earned Coretta Scott King Awards recognizing African-American authors and illustrators of outstanding books for children and young adults. Lester’s book, published by Jump at the Sun, tells the history of slavery using as a focal point the largest slave auction in American history. Collier’s watercolor-and-collage illustrations for Nikki Giovanni’s tale of Rosa Parks’s determination, published by Henry Holt, brings the Civil Rights movement to life.

Other awardees were:

  • Cynthia Rylant, winner of the Theodor Seuss Geisel Award for most distinguished beginning reader book, for Henry and Mudge and the Great Grandpas, published by Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers;
  • John Green, winner of the Michael L. Printz Award for excellence in young-adult literature, for Looking for Alaska, published by Dutton Books;
  • Jacqueline Woodson, winner of the Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement in writing for young adults;
  • Viola Canales, author of The Tequila Worm, published by Wendy Lamb Books, and illustrator Raul Colón, illustrator of Pat Mora’s Doña Flor: A Tall Tale about a Giant Woman with a Big Heart, published by Alfred A. Knopf, earned Pura Belpré Awards for the children’s books that best portray, affirm, and celebrate the Latino experience; and
  • Sally M. Walker, winner of the Robert F. Sibert Award for most distinguished informational book for children, for Secrets of a Civil War Submarine: Solving the Mysteries of the H. L. Hunley, published by Carolrhoda Books.

A complete list of ALA award-winning books published during 2005 is found on the Public Information Office website.

Posted January 23, 2006.

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