Library to Host 2016 Américas Award for Children’s and Young Adult Literature
Authors Pam Muñoz Ryan and Ashley Hope-Perez will receive the Américas Award for Children’s and Young Adult Literature during a special awards presentation on Thursday, Sept. 22, at 2:30 p.m. in the Mumford Room, located on the sixth floor of the Library of Congress James Madison Memorial Building, 101 Independence Avenue, S.E., Washington, D.C. A reception will follow the presentation.
The Américas Award is administered by the Consortium of Latin American Studies Programs (CLASP) at Vanderbilt University and jointly sponsored by Tulane University’s Stone Center for Latin American Studies. The Library of Congress Hispanic Division and its Center for the Book will host the event, which is free and open to the public. Reservations are required and can be made through the Library’s Special Events Office at (202) 707-6385.
Award-winning author Pam Muñoz Ryan will be honored for her work “Echo” (Scholastic Press, 2015). A teacher before she became a best-selling author, Ryan has written more than 25 books for young people, including “Esperanza Rising,” winner of the Pura Belpré Medal. Her other award-winning books include “Riding Freedom” and “When Marian Sang.”
Ashley Hope-Perez receives the award for her book “Out of Darkness” (Carolrohoda Lab, 2015), which also received a 2016 Printz honor for excellence in young-adult literature and the 2016 Tomás Rivera Book Award. Her other works of young-adult fiction include “What Can’t Wait” and “The Knife and the Butterfly.”
The Américas Award recognizes outstanding U.S. works of fiction, poetry, folklore or selected non-fiction published during the previous year. The work must “authentically and engagingly portray Latin America, The Caribbean, or Latinos in the United States.” More information about the Américas Award and CLASP can be found at www.claspprograms.org.
The Library of Congress Hispanic Division, established in 1939, is the center for the study of the cultures and societies of Hispanic/Latinos in the United States and Latin America, the Caribbean, the Iberian Peninsula and other areas where Spanish or Portuguese influence have been significant. For more information about the Hispanic Reading Room and the Hispanic collections of the Library, visit loc.gov/rr/hispanic/.
The Library of Congress is the world’s largest library, offering access to the creative record of the United States—and extensive materials from around the world—both on site and online. It is the main research arm of the U.S. Congress and the home of the U.S. Copyright Office. Explore collections, reference services and other programs and plan a visit at loc.gov, access the official site for U.S. federal legislative information at congress.gov, and register creative works of authorship at copyright.gov.
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