Happy 90th Birthday, WILPF!

Today is the official birthday of Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. I believe that means the women who met at the Hague 90 years ago officially formed WILPF on April 28, 1915.

In honor of our birthday, the Jane Addams Peace Association announced this year's winners of the Jane Addam's Children's Book Awards.

Since 1953, the Jane Addams Children's Book Awards annually acknowledge books published in the U.S. during the previous year. Books chosen for the Awards effectively address themes or topics that promote peace, justice, world community, and/or equality of the sexes and all races. The books must also meet conventional standards of literary and artistic excellence.

The winner in the Books for Younger Children category is Selavi, That is Life: A Haitian Story of Hope, written and illustrated by Youme Landowne, from Cinco Puntos Press. In this arresting story based on real children, a homeless, nameless boy finds companions in the street who together build a community of survival and a radio station that speaks courage to struggling youth. Illustrations, skilled in their directness and power, striking photographs, and an afterword by Edwidge Dandicat complete this view of contemporary Haitian life.

In the category of Books for Older Children, the winner is With Courage and Cloth: Winning the Fight for a Woman's Right to Vote, by Ann Bausum, published by National Geographic Society. Attractively designed, With Courage and Cloth focuses especially on the period of the woman suffrage movement from 1913 to 1920, when the vote was finally won by determined suffragists. Bausum frankly addresses, in text and graphic archival photographs, the controversies, the failures and the triumphs that prove that it was, indeed, a fight. Impeccable documentation completes the book.

There are also Honor books in both categories. To read the entire press release, please go to JAPA's homepage and click on the Book Awards link on the left side of the page.

The Jane Addams Peace Association is the 501c(3) educational affiliate of WILPF. US WILPF is a 501c(4) organization. For those of you not in tight with IRS codes, that means WILPF can more easily lobby the US government on important peace and justice issues than our sister peace organizations, who must spend the majority of their money on educational activities. There are other implications of the status; but since I'm not an expert on these things I wont attempt to explain them.