2015 Ezra Jack Keats Book Award Winners Announced
Deborah Pope, Executive Director of the Ezra Jack Keats Foundation said of the award program:
The Ezra Jack Keats Book Award celebrates and inspires exceptional new writers and illustrators, who are seldom recognized in the early stages of their careers. These new artists have created books of beauty in the spirit of Keats that portray the universal qualities of childhood, a strong and supportive family and the multicultural nature of our world.
Ellen Ruffin, Curator of the de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection added:
It is a privilege to administer the Ezra Jack Keats Book Award. The de Grummond Collection’s holdings of Keats’ work remind us of the unique contributions he made to the world of children’s literature. We enthusiastically embrace the 2015 EJK Book Award winners, whose own books may one day join Ezra’s in the de Grummond Collection.
The 2015 Ezra Jack Keats Book Award winner for new writer:
- Chieri Uegaki for Hana Hashimoto, Sixth Violin (Kids Can Press; illustrated by Qin Leng)
The 2015 Ezra Jack Keats Book Award winner for new illustrator:
- Chris Haughton for Shh! We Have a Plan (Candlewick Press)
New Writer Honors:
- Adam Auerbach for Edda: A Little Valkyrie’s First Day of School (Christy Ottaviano Books; illustrated by Adam Auerbach)
- Alan Rabinowitz for A Boy and a Jaguar (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; illustrated by Cátia Chien)
- Misty Copeland for Firebird (G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers; illustrated by Christopher Myers)
New Illustrator Honors:
- Evan Turk for Grandfather Gandhi (Atheneum Books for Young Readers; written by Arun Gandhi and Bethany Hegedus)
- Mike Curato for Little Elliot, Big City (Henry Holt and Company Books for Young Readers)
For a complete list of past winners, click here.
About the EJK Foundation
Founded by the late Caldecott award-winning children’s book author and illustrator Ezra Jack Keats, the Ezra Jack Keats Foundation fosters children’s love of reading and creative expression by supporting arts and literacy programs in public schools and libraries; cultivating new writers and illustrators of exceptional picture books that reflect the experience of childhood in our diverse culture; and protecting and promoting the work of Keats, whose book The Snowy Day broke the color barrier in mainstream children’s publishing. For more about the Foundation, please visit the www.ezra-jack-keats.org/.
About the de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection
The de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection at The University of Southern Mississippi is one of North America’s leading research centers in the field of children’s literature. The Collection holds the original manuscripts and illustrations of more than 1,300 authors and illustrators, as well as 180,000+ mostly American and British published books dating back to 1530. Since 1985, the de Grummond Collection has been the home of the Ezra Jack Keats Archive, which includes manuscripts, typescripts, sketches, dummies, illustrations and proofs for Ezra Jack Keats’ books.For more about the de Grummond, please visit the www.lib.usm.edu/degrummond/.
