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Center for Children's Books names Gryphon winner,
three 'honor books'
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[FEB. 14, 2007]
CHAMPAIGN -- "The True Story of Stellina,"
written and illustrated by Matteo Pericoli, has won the 2007 Gryphon Award for
Children's Literature.
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The award, which includes a $1,000 prize, is given annually by the
Center for Children's Books
at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a unit of the
Graduate School of Library and Information Science. The award
recognizes the author of an outstanding English language work of
fiction or nonfiction for which the primary audience is children in
kindergarten through fourth grade.
Betsy Hearne, the director of the center and a professor of
library science at Illinois, describes the winning book as a warm
family story about a lost baby bird rescued from a city sidewalk by
the author's wife.
"Stellina becomes the star of a rhythmic text featuring natural
repetition for the transitional reader and oral cadence for reading
aloud," Hearne said. "Spare, lyrical watercolor illustrations deepen
the appeal and enhance the tonal effect," she said.
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Three "honor books" representing a diversity of genres, styles
and formats also were named: "Sea Horse: The Shyest Fish in the
Sea," by Chris Butterworth and illustrated by John Lawrence; "Ruby
Lu, Empress of Everything," by Lenore Look and illustrated by Anne
Wilsdorf; and "Good Boy, Fergus!" written and illustrated by David
Shannon. All four books were published in 2006.
The Gryphon Award was begun in 2004 as a way to focus attention
on transitional reading -- "an area of literature for youth that,
despite being crucial to the successful transition of children from
new readers to independent lifelong readers, does not receive the
critical recognition it deserves," Hearne said.
The award is funded by the Center for Children's Books Outreach
Endowment Fund. Income from the fund supports outreach activities
for the center and the Gryphon Award.
Gifts may be made to the
fund or
by contacting Diana Stroud, GSLIS Development Office, at
217-244-9577 or dstroud@uiuc.edu
or 501 E. Daniel St., Champaign, IL 61820.
(Text copied from
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign News Bureau release) |
