The Coretta Scott King Author Award for this year goes to Rita Williams-Garcia. Williams-Garcia also won the award in 2014 for P.S. Be Eleven and in 2011 for One Crazy Summer. Her latest book Gone Crazy in Alabama has been award with the 2016 award.
Gone Crazy in Alabama is the sequel to One Crazy Summer. In Gone Crazy in Alabama Delphine and her two younger sisters are shipped of to Alabama for the summer to live with their grandmother and great grandmother. Rural Alabama in 1969 is much different than Brooklyn. The girls struggle with finding their identify, getting along and learning the difference between oppression and respect.
All sisters can relate to the three sisters in the story (oldest, middle and youngest) Delphine is the big sister, in charge of looking after her younger sisters. She takes her job a little too seriously, constantly picking on them to do right. However, she thinks that she is above helping out around the house (especially ironing sheets) and tells her grandmother that she will not do it. This act of disrespect does not sit well with her grandmother. Over the summer Delphine learns a lot about what it means to be a big sister and just how much her sisters mean to her.
Vonetta is the outspoken middle sister. She is always picking on her little sister and getting bossed around by her big sister. She doesn't take it from anyone. Vonetta loves being the center of attention and will do anything to stay there. Her favorite thing to do during the summer in Alabama was take stories back and forth between her great grandmother and her estranged sister Great Aunt Miss Trotter. Vonetta is so stubborn and bull-headed she finds herself in trouble when a tornado hits the town.
Fern, the baby, does not like to eat meat. She wants to take care of all her animals friends. She is constantly being picked on by Vonetta and being defended by Delphine. Fern is just a happy go lucky girl until her sister Vonetta turns up missing- or possibly worse.
All three girls learn, that even through all the fighting and bickering, they are still sisters and still love one another.
Now, in addition to the author and illustrator award, the ALA also recognizes new authors and illustrators with the Steptoe award.
This year's Coretta Scott King Steptoe award for new author goes to Ronald L. Smith for his book Hoodoo. Hoodoo is the story of a boy growing up in the south in the 1930's. The boy, Hoodoo, comes from a family who does hoodoo magik, although he has never been able to. One day a stranger comes to town and Hoodoo can feel the bad juju. The bad juju is showing up in his dreams and in real life. Hoodoo quickly realizes that there is evil in the world that only he can conquer. He digs as deep as he can inside himself for bravery and belief in the hoodoo magik to conquer the evil.
Hoodoo is an intense slightly scary novel. Smith does a great job with describing the scene, everything from the look and feel right down the the smell. He sets the scene brilliantly, the entire time you feel as though you are in 1930 Alabama from the way that the characters talk to what they are eating. If your intermediate aged child likes magic and spells and can be scared a little this book is perfect for them!
Happy Reading!
Laura
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