Caldecott Monday: A Story, A Story
I was hoping to get the 2017 Caldecott winner in time for this Monday, but alas, everyone else has put it on hold at the library too so I don't have it yet. But! I did read the 1971 winner, A Story, A Story, which I enjoyed very much. It's a retelling of an Anansi story - in this case, how Anansi got the Sky God to release his cache of stories down to earth so people could tell them - and it has lovely stylish illustrations with backgrounds that look like either woodcuts or batik.
Oftentimes there's no obvious correlation between award winners and historical events at the time, but occasionally you can spot the effects of wider social trends. Both the Caldecott and the Newbery Award committees suddenly discovered black people in the 1960s and 70s; I'm not sure if the Civil Rights movement made the committee more interested in these books, or if more of these books were available because the Civil Rights movement pushed publishers to start publishing them. Probably some combination of both.
In recent years there have been a couple of Newbery Honor books with some LGBT content (heavily implied rather than outright stated, but still) - The War That Saved My Life and Roller Girl. I suspect they may back off from that now that the political climate has changed, but I guess we'll see.
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Oftentimes there's no obvious correlation between award winners and historical events at the time, but occasionally you can spot the effects of wider social trends. Both the Caldecott and the Newbery Award committees suddenly discovered black people in the 1960s and 70s; I'm not sure if the Civil Rights movement made the committee more interested in these books, or if more of these books were available because the Civil Rights movement pushed publishers to start publishing them. Probably some combination of both.
In recent years there have been a couple of Newbery Honor books with some LGBT content (heavily implied rather than outright stated, but still) - The War That Saved My Life and Roller Girl. I suspect they may back off from that now that the political climate has changed, but I guess we'll see.
This entry was originally posted at http://osprey-archer.dreamwidth.org/567201.html. Please comment there using OpenID.