Coretta Scott King Book Awards Committee announces 2009 Book Donation Grant Winners

Contact: Isaac Tufvesson
Communications Specialist, ALA OLOS
(312) 280-2140
itufvesson@ala.org

NEWS
For Immediate Release
February 13, 2009

The Coretta Scott King Book Awards Committee has announced that East Iberville School, St. Gabriel, La., the Hunstville-Madison County Public Library, Ala., and The Legal Aid Society Juvenile Rights Practice of New York  will receive the 2009 Coretta Scott King Review Book Donation Grant.

East Iberville School ( http://www.ipsb.net/), located on the east side of the Mississippi River, serves Pre-K-12 students. Of the many benefits these books will bring to the students, Fran Fransen, librarian at East Iberville School, cites the Coretta Scott King Book Award titles as having “the power to resonate and instill pride in their heritage and hope for their future.”

The Huntsville-Madison County Public Library ( http://hpl.lib.al.us/) was established in 1819 as the first public library in Alabama. The book grant will go toward its Ready Reader Program, which includes literacy kits and other resources to aid Headstart Porgrams, Evenstart Programs and subsidized day car providers in teaching young children the fundamentals of reading.

The Legal Aid Society Juvenile Rights Practice ( http://www.legal-aid.org) will use the books for its innovative Books for Kids project. The program is designed to promote literacy for children involved in family court cases in New York , giving vulnerable children and their families the opportunity to read and own their own books.

The Coretta Scott King Review Book Donation Grant aims to help build collections and bring books into the lives of children in latchkey, preschool programs, faith-based reading projects, homeless shelters, charter schools and under-funded libraries. An enduring message of the Coretta Scott King Book Award Committee’s Public Awareness Campaign is that books and reading can only add value to children's lives if books are present in their lives along with opportunities to read and be read to. The awards are administered by ALA’s Ethnic and Multicultural Information Exchange Round Table (EMIERT).

For more information, and to download the application, visit http://www.ala.org/csk