Each year, the Bank Street Children’s Book Committee reads all books published for young readers, and grants three awards, one in fiction, one in nonfiction, one in poetry. Here they are! Best in Fiction: The War that Saved my Life…
Category: community action
Joelito’s Big Decision: A Bilingual Book About Living Wages
Joelito’s Big Decision/La Gran Decision de Joelito by Ann Berlak with illustrations by Daniel Camacho In this bilingual book for kids, Ann Berlak tackles some very big topics: corporate greed, living wages for workers, and workers’ protests. She tells…
A Community Story: Review of A Fighting Chance
In my review of Craig Lew’s Breath to Breath earlier this month, I talked about the role of small presses in publishing diverse books that also present a wider range of subject matter, points of view, and styles. California journalist…
Review: All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely
All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely (Atheneum, 2015) takes place over the span of one week – the week after a white police officer brutally beats an African American teen boy. It’s told in alternating points of…
Interview with Pat Schmatz About Lizard Radio
“I do not believe.” So begins Pat Schmatz’s new YA novel Lizard Radio (September 8, 2015, Candlewick Press). It is a perfect first line for a book largely about belief – belief in one’s self, belief in a government and…
Frank Conversations About Race and Class: A Review of This Side of Home
Wherever it occurs, the process of gentrification inspires heated debate. On the one hand, new residents fix up crumbling buildings and bring new businesses to the neighborhood. On the other, these residents raise housing prices and displace longtime residents and…
Today’s Teens Fighting for Their Communities: A Review of Pig Park
Claudia Guadalupe Martinez’s Pig Park (Cinco Puntos, 2014) is a contemporary novel that depicts with affection and a light touch a bustling, though little-known, neighborhood in Chicago and an “unholy alliance” between business interests and politicians. Ever since the rendering…
An interview with Rad American Women A-Z’s Kate Schatz
Kate Schatz’s recent release, Rad American Women A-Z, is an artistic-historic compilation of leftist women whose accomplishments have sometimes been forgotten but who paved the way for women of all kinds to have the rights we have today. What rad…
Interview With Author Kekla Magoon
In November I reviewed the timely and relevant novel How It Went Down (Henry Holt, 2014) by Kekla Magoon, a novel that begins with an incident all too timely — an African American teenager has been shot and killed by…
The No. 1 Car Spotter, in honor of MLK Jr.
I suppose it’s sort of an odd choice to review The No. 1 Car Spotter by Nigerian author Atinuke in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday. But it’s not as odd as you might think. Bear with me and…