Deb Taylor Pratt Library Inside Out and Back Again
As told to Anne Ford
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. The Watsons Go to Birmingham–1963. Scroll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush. A Hero Ain't Nothin' but a Sandwich.
This is just the smallest smattering of titles that take won Coretta Scott King (CSK) Book Awards in the last half-century. Founded in 1969, the awards have become the mark of excellence for books that are authored or illustrated by African Americans and that demonstrate an appreciation of African-American culture and universal human values. In improver to awards and honors for authors and illustrators, the John Steptoe Honor for New Talent and the CSK–Virginia Hamilton Accolade for Lifetime Accomplishment are also presented annually.
American Libraries celebrates this astonishing half-century of excellence by sharing stories and thoughts from 9 of the awards' winners and committee members.
When you were a child, did you take access to many books that featured black characters?
Ashley Bryan: No, not when I was growing up.
Eloise Greenfield: In the 1930s, I didn't run into whatsoever books with African-American characters, but I didn't know that the characters depicted were supposed to be white people. They didn't expect similar the white people I saw. Many books used line drawings, black lines around white paper. Later, I knew better.
Claire Hartfield: When I was a kid—I mostly had my childhood in the Sixties—I don't call back black people being portrayed much in mainstream culture at all. The civil rights motion was going on at the same time, so I was well aware of Martin Luther King Jr. and the Black Panther Party, just it didn't trickle down into the books I was given. As a little kid, I didn't recollect, "Gee, why are there no portrayals?" Information technology was more along the lines of: "Well, that's just the way it is." No one ever asked me well-nigh it. It wasn't till later that I realized there was an absence.
I used to read books well-nigh little girls a lot, and one of my favorite series was [Sydney Taylor's] All-of-a-Kind Family unit, which features a Jewish family. That was as close as I got to feeling like, "Okay, hither's a family unit that's more like my family unit, not the typical white Christian family unit."
Bryan Collier: There were only a few that actually have stuck with me over the years. One is The Snowy Twenty-four hours by Ezra Jack Keats [published in 1962]. I call up opening it upward, and I noticed that Peter and I looked but alike, and I remembered I had the aforementioned pajama impress that Peter had in the book. I was 4 years onetime, and information technology just hit me at a visceral level. It felt almost bigger than magic.
Deborah Taylor: I was a immature developed librarian in the early to mid-1970s, and I worked in a majority-African-American customs. If at that place were books about race, they were most the "Negro problem," so to speak, never by anyone actually growing up and living through those experiences. You could observe an occasional biography, but in that location was not a lot. And many of the books that were well-nigh African-American life were not written by African Americans. A little chip later, we started to get books by Walter Dean Myers, and things like [Mildred Taylor's] Coil of Thunder, Hear My Cry.
Satia Orange: I'm most 77. I tell you lot what I had: I had Little Black Sambo [by Helen Bannerman].
In 1969, the Coretta Scott Rex Book Award was founded by school librarians Mabel McKissick and Glyndon Greer, who met by chance at the ALA Annual Briefing in Atlantic City, New Bailiwick of jersey.
Carolyn Garnes: They were in the exhibit hall, and they were going to the booth of John Carroll, a book publisher, and he had posters of Martin Luther Male monarch Jr. [to give away]. They arrived at his booth at the same fourth dimension, and John had only ane poster left. Anyway, they were preparing to go to the Newbery-Caldecott banquet, and they said, "No African American has e'er won," and were lamenting that. And John Carroll said to them, "Why don't you ladies start your own award?" They looked at him and decided to take him up on that idea.
Mrs. Greer was friends with Coretta Scott Rex. This was the year later on Dr. Male monarch had died. Mrs. Greer said, "Y'all know, so much is being named for Dr. King. We need to not name this laurels Rex," so she thought of Coretta, her friend and his widow. She chosen Mrs. Rex and asked would she mind if we named the laurels for her. Mrs. King said yes, not knowing what the devil Mrs. Greer was naming for her.
The founders had to struggle for submissions in the showtime, because at that place were not many African-American books in publication.
Orange: A couple of years afterward, Mrs. King came and spoke at the awards breakfast, and afterward she stayed for about an hour and shook hands and talked to individuals. The best part was, she called information technology "my honour."
Each year,ALA announces the winners of the superlative books for children and young adults, including the Coretta Scott Rex Book Awards, at its Midwinter Meeting & Exhibits, while the Coretta Scott Rex Book Awards Breakfast is held at the ALA Annual Briefing and Exhibition.
What do you lot call back nearly either winning your start Coretta Scott King Volume Award, or making the call to tell others that they'd won?
Greenfield: "Oh my goodness, I received the phone call!"
Javaka Steptoe: Whenever Midwinter comes around, there's always a idea in the back of your caput: "Am I gonna become a telephone call or not?" They always phone call you at the crack of dawn. [laughs]
Garnes: People have asked me, "Why is the Coretta Scott King breakfast held so early in the morning time?" Well, ALA'south Annual Conference schedule was already established. We planned the breakfast for vii:thirty in the morning then it wouldn't interfere with other activities. And yous know, the commission doesn't want to change.
Collier: I didn't know annihilation nearly the Coretta Scott Rex Book Awards, and I got this call at six in the morning the twenty-four hours of the award, librarians screaming on the phone. They told me I'd won, and I said, "Okay," and and then I hung the phone upwardly and went back to slumber. They [called back and] said, "No, no, no, this is bigger than y'all think this is." I was pleased and excited in some regard, simply I didn't know exactly what I was excited nigh until after. When I fully understood what the award meant, it was a great feeling.
Taylor: I was jury chair in 2000, when Bud, Non Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis won both the Coretta Scott Male monarch Book Award and the Newbery Medal. That was actually special. It must accept been Dr. Male monarch's birthday when nosotros were making the call, because [Curtis] kept saying, "And all on Dr. Male monarch's birthday! All on Dr. King's altogether!" I'll never forget it.
Hartfield: I was at the gym on the elliptical, listening to music through my phone, and the phone rang, and I looked at the caller ID, and it was something from Seattle. So I simply clicked it off, and the music came dorsum on. So information technology rang once more, same number. And so I picked up, and in that location was this vocalisation that said, "Hello, is this Claire Hartfield? We merely want to tell you y'all've won the Coretta Scott Male monarch Book Award." It felt surreal. We talked for a few minutes, and and then I went back to chugging away on the elliptical, trying to procedure it.
Garnes: They're excited, and they know the CSK honor is a stamp of blessing for that book, it's going to pretty much stay in impress, and libraries all over the country are going to purchase information technology.
What influence accept the CSK awards had on your career?
Collier: Information technology took me seven years to get my showtime book bargain. I went door to door to every publisher once a calendar week with a portfolio. Over and over again. But in one case I got the honour, I got 10 offers the next year.
Hartfield: Of course, I'k happy for myself, but what makes me happiest is that I've been trying to get people to know the history of what has come up before. I was driven by a desire to contribute not just whatsoever former story that I was interested in, merely to make full a chunk of history that no one had written about and that I felt was valuable for little kids to see. Through this award, I'm realizing that goal. I'1000 getting so many more inquiries. I experience similar it's getting out there to the public, and that'due south really what I wanted.
Claudette McLinn: The Coretta Scott King awards accept launched the careers of many major authors and illustrators, and if it wasn't for the award, nosotros wouldn't have this bully torso of work that is a function of children'south literature now.
From 1992 to 2011, I had a multicultural children's bookstore in Los Angeles called Bright Lights. The majority of the books were African American. I recall a lady in her 90s coming in, and she started crying. She said, "I have never seen whatsoever book that looked like me." A lot of parents were overwhelmed. They said, "I only never knew in that location were then many books almost u.s.a.."
Steptoe: People like shiny things, so when they come across a book with a medal on it, they say, "Oh, this must be a good book." So where a volume might be disregarded, someone might then take a second look. When they become familiar with the CSK awards, they come to expect excellence. They say history is written by the victors. I am very happy and excited that I tin have agency in how the story is being told.
Garnes: When my branch [at Atlanta–Fulton Public Library Organisation] came up on its 35th anniversary, I knew I wanted to do something special, so I wrote a grant to develop my African-American children's collection. I actually got to order the [Coretta Scott Male monarch Book Laurels–winning] books. It was a rewarding feel. I had that collection in a special identify, and then when patrons walked in, they couldn't miss it. Some of the parents just went straight there.
How has the landscape of children'south publishing inverse in the last 50 years vis-à-vis African Americans?
Bryan: A librarian can help a family now past directing them to books nearly black children and black people. There'southward much to refer to now.
McLinn: It's improve than what information technology was. But it'south however non plenty for me. It's not enough at all.
Hartfield: There are strides being fabricated, for sure, and I definitely applaud that. Merely if we did not have the CSK awards, I recollect that a lot of actually important children'due south literature by African Americans would fly under the radar. The reality is that getting an laurels means something to the public, it just does. It's hard enough to get literature out into the globe in any meaningful style, period, no affair what your race is.
By highlighting and spotlighting African-American literature specifically, it fills a pigsty in people's knowledge. Y'all desire African-American kids to abound upwards with lots of stories that represent them, the ones I didn't accept when I was a child. It gives you lot a different sense of self. I likewise think it'due south important for kids who are not of colour, to incorporate into their globe kids who are not similar them in terms of how they look and what their experiences are.
Steptoe: Whenever I get to ALA Annual, I run across the same people nigh of the time. I love them, just there's enough of us to take a lot more than fresh blood, you know? That has to exercise not merely with having [blackness] authors and illustrators simply having people of color inside the infrastructure of children'south books—the sellers, the marketers, the editors. I haven't actually seen that much change in those aspects. It would be good for younger generations to call up almost jobs in the publishing industry and library science.
Garnes: I am really proud of the African-American children's literature that exists today. There is a rich body of books available for children to savor, for adults to share with children. It's however not where we would like it in terms of the number of books published.
African-American authors and illustrators nonetheless demand that recognition of the CSK honor to recognize their talent. Let'due south take Walter Dean Myers, for instance. He has won more Coretta Scott King awards than any other author: six awards and six honors. Myers was one of the authors who got immature blackness boys reading. I don't call back he would have achieved the level of literary success if he had not been recognized by the Coretta Scott Male monarch Book Awards.
Collier: If you await at books published and written about African Americans made by African Americans, it's [still] astonishingly low, similar one%–two% of the business. If the honour disappeared, oftentimes writers and illustrators would never get recognized, even if they fabricated the same book. The Coretta Scott King Volume Awards were designed to level the playing field. The world would exist empty without information technology. Continue reading and supporting the books, please. All easily on deck.
Source: https://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/2019/06/03/50-years-of-csk-book-awards/
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