The Ezra Jack Keats Awards were presented during the Fay B. Kaigler Children's Book Festival, April 12-14, 2023, at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg. The beauty of presenting the EJK awards--given annually to an outstanding new writer and new illustrator and co-administered by the De Grummond Children's Literature Collection at USM--at the festival is that creators who are newer to the world of children's literature are embraced by the more seasoned authors and artists in their field.
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| Kyle Lukoff | |
The opening keynote speaker on Thursday was Kyle Lukoff, a former bookseller and librarian who's now a full-time author. He received a 2022 Newbery Honor and a Stonewall Award, and was a National Book Award finalist for his novel Too Bright to See (Dial); his picture book When Aidan Became a Brother (Lee & Low), illustrated by Kaylani Juanita, was a Stonewall Award winner, a Charlotte Huck Honor Book, and a 2020 ALA Notable Children's Book. Lukoff spoke about being "against metaphor"--books that use animals to stand in for "any kind of difference." That said, he believes that The Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown, illustrated by Clement Hurd, is the perfect metaphor. He believes "good picture books have more in common with formalist poetry." As a trans man, Lukoff said the book's "inner emotional landscape was mine." When it comes to nature versus nurture, Lukoff believes "the answer is always both." In Brown's book, running away means "becoming another person," Lukoff said. "Becoming trans means finding your own path and also causing a rupture with those who love you."
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| Gene Luen Yang | |
"You have to know your past if you want to create a future," Lou Richie told Gene Luen Yang, inspiring Yang's five-year journey to create Dragon Hoops (First Second), a 2021 Printz Honoree. Yang used this idea as the frame for his acceptance speech for the 2023 Southern Mississippi Medallion, also presented at the Fay B. Kaigler Festival. Richie is the varsity basketball coach at Bishop O'Dowd High School in Oakland, Calif., where Yang taught computer science. Yang came to understand the concept when he researched the Chinese Boxer Rebellion (1899-1901); he found both sides of the conflict compelling, and the result was his 2013 NBA finalist Boxers & Saints (First Second), published in two volumes, each representing one side.
Yang spoke of the history of dehumanizing Chinese characters in U.S. comics, dating back to the late 1800s. The Chinese Exclusion Act was passed in 1882, prohibiting the immigration of Chinese laborers for 10 years. "Yellow peril villains" began to appear in comics, such as Chin Lun in DC Comics Batman series, and Egg Fu, also in DC Comics. For Yang's recent makeover of Shang-Chi for Marvel Comics, he wanted to bring the hero in line with other human-to-superhero Marvel figures such as Peter Parker/Spiderman (and the Green Turtle in Yang's The Shadow Hero). "Our culture should humanize, rather than de-humanize," he said. He gives Shang-Chi a human back story, and the comic series stretched from five issues to 24 issues. Yang's fans will recognize the way the graphic novelist transformed the human to the supernatural on an everyday scale in his award-winning 2007 graphic novel American Born Chinese (First Second). On May 24, Disney + will release a TV series based on the book, starring Oscar winners Michelle Yeoh and Ben Wang, directed by Destin Daniel Cretton. Yang thanked librarians in the audience: "You preserve the past; you do this to influence the future."
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| Ezra Jack Keats Award winners (front, l.-r.) Kari Percival, Doug Salati, (back) Pauline David-Sax, Zahra Marwan (photo: Kelly Dunn) |
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And the future looks bright, when viewed through the lens of the Ezra Jack Keats Award winners and honorees. "Love makes windows and mirrors into disco balls," said EJK Writer Honoree Pauline David-Sax, giving a nod to Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop's paradigm-shifting observation of what books can do for children who have often felt unseen or uncelebrated. David-Sax's Everything in Its Place (Doubleday), illus. by Charnelle Pinkney Barlow, was inspired by the Sirens, New York City's oldest all-women motorcycle club, with members of all races, body shapes, cis and trans, gay and straight. "You never know a Siren 'til you see the patch on her back," she said, thanking "the librarians who let disco-ball books shine, to light up children's lives."
EJK Writer Honor recipient Juliana Perdomo, speaking by video from her home in Colombia, said she began Sometimes All I Need Is Me (Candlewick) as a comfort to herself. She wanted to present children in all of their diversity. Nigerian American fine artist Chioma Ebinama, who received an Illustrator Honor for her picture book debut, Emile and the Field (Make Me a World), with text by Kevin Young, said in her video message that illustrating this book was "a childhood dream come true."
Zahra Marwan, EJK Illustrator Honoree for Where Butterflies Fill the Sky (Bloomsbury), which she also wrote, spoke of her statelessness--she was born in Kuwait to a father with no citizenship. As a result of her book, Marwan said, "Strangers in Kuwait send me photos of butterflies, saying 'I thought of you,' " and she expressed her gratitude to the people in her adopted state of New Mexico, "who celebrated me in a place where I wasn't born."
"Over 60 languages are spoken in my town," said Kari Percival, EJK Writer winner for How to Say Hello to a Worm (Rise X Penguin Workshop). When Percival was offered a plot in her local urban community garden, she invited others to join her, for "springtime meetups with children and their grown-ups." Their questions and the answers they arrived at together inspired her book. "Questions are a gateway to knowing, and to knowing what we don't know," Percival observed.
"I wanted to convey the joy of being a little boy on that kind of day," said Doug Salati, EJK Illustrator winner for Hot Dog, which he also wrote (Knopf). Salati had observed a dachshund experiencing utter freedom on a sunny beach not far from Manhattan, and felt a kinship he wanted to capture in images and words. "I want to remain open to playfulness and a sense of wonder," he said.
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| Linda Williams Jackson | |
"The book that one person thinks might harm his or her child might be the very book that will help someone else's child," said Linda Williams Jackson, author of The Lucky Ones (Candlewick), Midnight Without a Moon (Clarion), and A Sky Full of Stars (Clarion), speaking on the closing day of the festival. "What do these three people have in common?" she asked, showing photos of Oprah Winfrey, Sam Cooke, and Morgan Freeman. "They are all from Mississippi. They are all avid readers," Jackson said, "The right book can change the trajectory of a child's life." For her, that book was The Soul Brothers and Sister Lou by Kristin Hunter. She found it in the public library. The 11th of her mother's 13 children, and the fourth of her father's eight children, Jackson did not have books in her house. She discovered the Rosedale, Miss., public library later in her childhood. It was on the white side of town, and as Jackson put it, "Jim Crow had died a slow death." But, she said, "Once I could see myself in a book, I could read any book."
Jackson wondered what might have happened if she had not discovered The Soul Brothers and Sister Lou. What if she had not become a reader? She urged the audience to check out We Need Diverse Books (WNDB) for resources on how to fight banned books. "You never know what's going on in a child's home," Jackson said. She wants children to know: " 'It's not your fault; you will survive.' You never know whose life you might change." --Jennifer M. Brown