On Saturday at ALA Midwinter in Philadelphia, Pa., as part of the kickoff to a public awareness campaign to honor its 40th Anniversary, the Coretta Scott King Book Awards Committee announced the establishment of the Virginia Hamilton Lifetime Achievement Award. The standing-room-only crowd was cheered by the honor to Hamilton but felt a sense of sorrow at her loss.
Virginia Hamilton (1936-2002) was the first children's book author to receive a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship, won the 1975 Newbery Medal for her book M.C. Higgins, the Great as well as garnered three Newbery Honors. She was twice winner of the Coretta Scott King Author Award, for Her Stories in 1996 and for her story collection The People Could Fly in 1986. (The title story of The People Could Fly was recently published as a stand-alone picture book, for which Leo and Diane Dillon earned a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor.)
Deborah Taylor, chair of the CSK Book Awards Committee and coordinator of school and student services at Enoch Pratt Free Library, and Andrea Davis Pinkney, v-p and editor-at-large at Scholastic and honorary chair of the CSK public awareness campaign, said that the Virginia Hamilton Lifetime Achievement Award will be given annually and will alternate between creators and promoters of African-American literature for children. The inaugural award will be given to a writer or illustrator for the body of his or her work; the following year, the award will be given to a librarian, teacher, professor or other professional whose life's work, Taylor said, has been "to promote African-American literature to children."
Arnold Adoff, Hamilton's husband as well as a poet and children's book author, wrote and read a poem for the occasion. He and his family have endowed the lifetime achievement award, which will be a cornerstone of the (roughly 18-month) public awareness campaign to commemorate the 40th anniversary Coretta Scott King Book Awards, first given in 1970.--Jennifer M. Brown