April 29 through May 5 was the 100th Anniversary of Children’s Book Week, and Penny Candy Books participated in a big way! Established in 1919 and now administered by Every Child A Reader, a nonprofit dedicated to inspiring a lifelong love of reading in children and teens across America, Children’s Book Week is the longest-running literacy initiative in the U.S.
Penny Candy collaborators were involved in nearly every aspect of the celebrations this year. We nominated Caldecott Award winner Ekua Holmes, who contributed one of the thirteen illustrations to our critically acclaimed picture book Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Boy by Tony Medina, for consideration to create a bookmark to celebrate children’s books and reading. Ekua was one of six artists chosen! You can see her bookmark here and below. Please download it, print it, use it!
We also nominated Morgan Clement, illustrator of A Card for My Father by Samantha Thornhill, for consideration to create a comic activity page. Morgan was one of seven illustrators chosen! You can see her comic activity page here. Be sure to print it out and finish the story she started!
Finally we nominated many of our authors to participate in interviews in collaboration with KidLit TV. We are excited to announce that the following authors were chosen: Shira Erlichman, author/illustrator of Be/Hold: A Friendship Book; Samantha Thornhill, author of A Card for My Father; Meera Sriram, author of The Yellow Suitcase; Mariana Llanos, author of Luca’s Bridge/El puente de Luca; Molly Felder, author of Henry the Boy; and Maya Abu-Alhayyat, author of The Blue Pool of Questions! Shira’s video went live on May 5; you can view it here. Below is the schedule for when the remaining videos will go live. Stay tuned for more details!
July 15: Samantha Thornhill
September 9: Meera Sriram
September 30: Mariana Llanos
November 4: Molly Felder
December 2: Maya Abu-Alhayyat
A big thank you goes out to the Children’s Book Council for their support of Every Child A Reader and their work to promote literacy and children’s literature.