Two titles from Eerdmans Books for Young Readers were honored yesterday at the American Library Association’s youth media awards ceremony in Seattle, Washington.
Claire Alexander’s Back to Front and Upside Down won the Schneider Family Award, which recognizes books that embody an artistic expression of the disability experience, for children ages 0-10.
Back to Front and Upside Down tells the story of an beginning writer named Stan, who is frustrated when his letters come out all in a muddle — “back to front and upside down.” Stan is afraid to tell the teacher his trouble, until a friend assures him that nobody’s good at everything and that everyone has to ask for help sometimes.
Anne de Graaf’s Son of a Gun was also named one of two Batchelder Honor books. The Mildred L. Batchelder Award is awarded annually to an outstanding children’s book originally published in a language other than English in a country other than the United States and subsequently translated into English for publication in the United States.
Son of a Gun tells the powerful and gripping story of a brother and sister, eight-year-old Lucky and ten-year-old Nopi, who are kidnapped from school and forced to become child soldiers in Liberia’s fourteen-year-long civil war. A sensitive and compelling narrative based on true stories of former child soldiers interviewed by the author, Son of a Gun also includes a section of notes and further information about Liberia.
Click to order Claire Alexander’s Back to Front and Upside Down and Anne de Graaf’s Son of a Gun.
To learn more about our ALA award winners, check out . . .
- The ALA’s press release “American Library Association announces 2013 youth media award winners.”
- Editor Kathleen Merz’s 2012 EerdWord post “Soldier Bear, the Batchelder, and the Risky Business of Publishing International Literature.”
- Rachel Bomberger’s EerdWord review of Son of a Gun.
- The websites of Claire Alexander and Anne de Graaf.
