Candlewick Press Titles Win Boston Globe–Horn Book Award and Honors
BOSTON, MA — Candlewick Press books received the Boston Globe–Horn Book Picture Book Award, as well as Honors in the Nonfiction and Fiction Award categories, as Roger Sutton, editor in chief of The Horn Book , and Linda Pizzuti Henry, managing director of the Boston Globe , announced the 2016 Boston Globe–Horn Book Award winners in a video this morning.
Celebrating their fiftieth year, the Boston Globe–Horn Book Awards are among the most prestigious honors in the field of children’s and young adult literature. A winner and two honor books were selected in each of three categories: picture book, fiction, and nonfiction, with Candlewick claiming four of the nine total recognitions.
Jazz Day: The Making of a Famous Photograph , written by Roxane Orgill and illustrated by Francis Vallejo, was named the Picture Book Award winner. The story of graphic designer Art Kane’s idiosyncratic project to assemble a large group of jazz musicians for a photograph—the now-iconic Harlem 1958 — Jazz Day uses Orgill’s captivating verse and Vallejo’s vibrant, detailed, and expressive paintings to capture an amazing moment in American jazz.
Two Candlewick titles were named Nonfiction Honor winners. Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer, Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement, written by Carole Boston Weatherford and illustrated by Ekua Holmes, combines stirring poems with stunning mixed-media collage illustrations to celebrate the life of Hamer, a champion of equal voting rights. Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad , by M. T. Anderson, offers a dramatic, challenging, and immersive history of the first half of the twentieth century in Soviet Russia, with a focus on the life of the slight, bespectacled composer. Anderson’s meticulous research and a captivating narrative celebrate courage, perseverance, and music.
Finally, The Hired Girl , by Laura Amy Schlitz, was named a Fiction Honor winner. A moving yet comedic tour de force, The Hired Girl tells the story of fourteen-year-old Joan Skraggs’s journey from a hardscrabble Pennsylvania farm to the sophistication of city life in Baltimore.
First presented in 1967 and customarily announced in June, the Boston Globe–Horn Book Awards are chosen by an independent panel of three judges, who are annually appointed by the editor of The Horn Book and directed to “seek and reward excellence.” This year’s judges were Roxanne Hsu Feldman, librarian, the Dalton School in New York; Elizabeth Bird, collection development specialist, Evanston Public Library; and chair Joanna Rudge Long of Vermont, a retired Horn Book Magazine reviewer and former children’s book editor of Kirkus Reviews.
About Candlewick Press
Candlewick Press is an independent publisher based in Somerville, Massachusetts. For over twenty years, Candlewick has published outstanding children’s books for readers of all ages, including books by award-winning authors and illustrators such as the former National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature Kate DiCamillo, M. T. Anderson, Jon Klassen, and Laura Amy Schlitz; the widely acclaimed Judy Moody, Mercy Watson, and ’Ology series; and favorites such as Guess How Much I Love You , Where’s Waldo?, and Maisy. Candlewick is part of the Walker Books Group, together with Walker Books UK in London and Walker Books Australia. The Walker Books Group has a unique ownership structure that includes all of its employees worldwide. Visit Candlewick online at www.candlewick.com.
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