2024 Malka Penn Awards Announced

The University of Connecticut's Malka Penn Awards for 2024 have been announced. The award "honors outstanding children's books that explore important human rights issues." This year there are two winners, five honor books, and a special recognition title.

One of the positive things I think awards do is bring books to readers' attention that they might not otherwise have heard of. In this case, one of the honor books particularly interests me.

The Bodyguard Unit: Edith Garrud, Women's Suffrage, and Jujitsu by Clement Xavier, Lisa Lugrin, and Albertine Ralenti speaks to a number of my interests--women's history, early twentieth century history, and martial arts. I'll be looking for it.

Kim Johnson's "This Is My America" Wins This Year's Malka Penn Award

This Is My America by Kim Johnson has won the 2021 Malka Penn Award for Human Rights in Children's Literature. The Malka Penn Award is given annually to the author of an outstanding children’s book addressing human rights issues or themes. It recognizes works of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoir, or biography written for children from preschool to high school. The award is named in honor of author Michele Palmer who writes under the pseudonym Malka Penn and presented by Dodd Human Rights Impact at the University of Connecticut.

This Is My America is Johnson's debut YA novel. HBO Max is working on a TV adaptation.

2021 Honor Books 

 

• Everything Sad is Untrue by Daniel Nayeri 
• Mexique: A Refugee Story from the Spanish Civil War by Maria José Ferrada and illustrated by Ana Penyas 
• Dear Justyce by Nic Stone
• Stand Up! Speak Up! by Andrew Joyner 
• Nana Akua Goes to School by Tricia Elam Walker and April Harrison

On-line Awards Ceremony Tomorrow Night, November 2

An awards ceremony for the Malka Penn Awards will be held tomorrow night, Nov. 2, 7:00 PM ET. Johnson and the Honor Book authors will be taking part in a panel, Mirrors, Windows, and Doors: Stories for Equity, Empathy, and Activism.

Register here.

Malka Penn Award Goes To "The White Rose"

The White Rose by Kip Wilson has won the 2019 Malka Penn Award for Human Rights in Children's Literature.  This is the third year for the award, which was  established in part by writer Michele Palmer who has written children's books under the name Malka Penn. The award also is connected with the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center at the University of Connecticut.

The White Rose is a novel-in-verse dealing with the White Rose resistance movement in Germany during World War II. Kip Wilson has published an extensive amount of short fiction and nonfiction. The White Rose is her first book.

Honor Books 

 

Four Malka Penn honor books were named this year:

• The Bridge Home by Padma Venkatraman
• The Girl of the Southern Sea by Michelle Kadarusman
• The Unwanted: Stories of the Syrian Refugees by Don Brown
• We Rise, We Resist, We Raise Our Voices edited by Wade Hudson and Cheryl Willis Hudson

The awards ceremony is scheduled for April 23 at the Thomas Dodd Research Center on the Storrs campus of the University of Connecticut.

On April 11, 2018: Author of "My Beautiful Birds" Wins First Malka Penn Award

Author Of "My Beautiful Birds" Wins First Malka Penn Award

I'm a little late with this news, but I recently learned that early last month author Suzanne Del Rizzo was presented with the first annual Malka Penn Award for Human Rights in Children's Literature for her book My Beautiful Birds. The award was announced last November at the Connecticut Children's Book Fair. The award presentation took place at the Thomas Dodd Research Center at the University of Connecticut, which, I can assure you, is a lovely building. The Northeast Children's Literature Collection is there.

The award will be given "to the author of an outstanding children’s book addressing human rights issues or themes, such as discrimination, equity, poverty, justice, war, peace, slavery or freedom."

In addition to this being Connecticut childlit news, and thus of importance to Original Content, I met Malka Penn a few times many years ago. Additionally, I read the lovely My Beautiful Birds last month as part of ReFoReMo.