Jacqueline Woodson’s ‘Brown Girl Dreaming’ Wins the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature
November 20, 2014 – The National Book Foundation has named Jacqueline Woodson’s BROWN GIRL DREAMING the winner of the 2014 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature. The award was announced on the evening of November 19 at Cipriani Wall Street, along with winners in the categories of Fiction, Nonfiction and Poetry. Woodson has been a National Book Award finalist three times for Hush, Locomotion, and Brown Girl Dreaming. This is her first win.
BROWN GIRL DREAMING is the New York Times bestselling memoir of Woodson’s childhood. Woodson shares the poignant, the gritty, and the sweet memories of her youth—as well as revealing the first sparks that ignited her writing career—in lyrical poems about growing up as an African American as the Civil Rights movement was gaining momentum. Raised in South Carolina and New York during the 1960s and 1970s, Woodson always felt halfway home in each place. Brown Girl Dreaming has been called “gorgeous” [Vanity Fair], “distinctive” [NPR Morning Edition] and “captivating” [The Wall Street Journal].
“It is such a joy to publish Jacqueline Woodson’s memoir, Brown Girl Dreaming, a book that has the power to touch people’s hearts with its honesty and lyricism,” says Nancy Paulsen, President and Publisher of Nancy Paulsen Books.
“Readers of all ages can relate to this moving portrait of a writer finding her voice and purpose during the burgeoning Civil Rights movement. We hope that this well-deserved accolade will bring many new readers to Jacqueline’s inspiring story.”
The National Book Award is one of the nation’s most prestigious literary prizes and has a stellar record of identifying and rewarding quality writing. In 1950, William Carlos Williams was the first Winner in Poetry, the following year William Faulkner was honored in Fiction, and so on through the years. Many previous Winners of a National Book Award are now firmly established in the canon of American literature, such as Sherman Alexie, Louise Erdrich, Jonathan Franzen, Denis Johnson, James McBride, Joyce Carol Oates, and Adrienne Rich.
Jacqueline Woodson has won several lifetime achievement awards including the Margaret A. Edwards Award in writing for young adults, the St. Katherine Drexel Award, and the 2012 Anne V. Zarrow Award for Young Reader’s Literature, as well as being shortlisted for the 2014 Hans Christian Andersen Award. She has received three Newbery Honors for the books After Tupac & D Foster, Feathers, and Show Way. She won the Coretta Scott King award and the LA Times Book Prize for Miracle’s Boys. She won a Caldecott Honor for Coming on Home Soon and the Jane Addams Peace Award for Each Kindness.
To learn more about BROWN GIRL DREAMING or to speak with Jacqueline Woodson, please contact Jessica Shoffel at 212.414.3464 or [email protected]
##
Penguin Young Readers is one of the leading children’s book publishers in the United States. The company owns a wide range of imprints and trademarks including Dial Books, Dutton, Grosset & Dunlap, Philomel, Puffin, Speak, Firebird, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, Viking, Razorbill, and Frederick Warne. These imprints are home to such award-winning, New York Times- bestselling authors as, Laurie Halse Anderson, Jay Asher, Judy Blume, Jan Brett, Eric Carle, Roald Dahl, Tomie dePaola, Sarah Dessen, Anna Dewdney, John Green, Anthony Horowitz, John Flanagan, Mike Lupica, Richelle Mead, Richard Peck, Patricia Polacco, and dozens of other popular authors. Penguin Young Readers is also the proud publisher of perennial brand franchises such as The Little Engine That Could, the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys series, Peter Rabbit, Spot, the Classic Winnie the Pooh, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Strega Nona, Madeline, Mad Libs, Alex Rider, the Rangers Apprentice, Skippyjon Jones, Flower Fairies, and Pippi Longstocking, among many others. Penguin Young Readers is a division of Penguin Random House.
Penguin Random House (http://global.penguinrandomhouse.com/) is the world’s most global trade book publisher. It was formed on July 1, 2013, upon the completion of an agreement between Bertelsmann and Pearson to merge their respective trade publishing companies, Random House and Penguin, with the parent companies owning 53% and 47%, respectively. Penguin Random House comprises the adult and children’s fiction and nonfiction print and digital trade book publishing businesses of Penguin and Random House in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India and South Africa, and Penguin’s trade publishing activity in Asia and Brazil; DK worldwide; and Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial’s Spanish-language companies in Spain, Mexico, Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia, and Chile. Penguin Random House employs more than 10,000 people globally across almost 250 editorially and creatively independent imprints and publishing houses that collectively publish more than 15,000 new titles annually. Its publishing lists include more than 70 Nobel Prize laureates and hundreds of the world’s most widely read authors.
