Book Awards

Today in class we had a discussion about children book awards and if having awards for different minority groups was a good idea or not. I had never realized that the Calidcott and other awards like that were so limiting in who was chosen for the award. When reflecting back on the readings, I agree with the Pinkney article more than the Aronson article. Pinkney makes a good point that the awards are meant to showcase the work of different minorities that may never win a Calidcott or other well known award. The children of these minority groups are then more able to see successful writers that come from the same backgrounds as they did. I think that having these awards like the CSK award and the Schneider Family book award are allowing minority authors a chance to be recognized for their work. Having these people in different miniority groups shows children that people like them are writers and are successful. This could possibly lead to more writers from different backgrounds in the future. Also, by having these awards it allows people from different backgrounds to easily find great pieces of literature about different groups of people that are possibly well written.