Center for Children's Books honors Scieszka with Gryphon Award

[image1-right]Battle Bunny, written by Jon Scieszka and Mac Barnett, illustrated by Matthew Myers, and published by Simon & Schuster, is the winner of the 2014 Gryphon Award for Children’s Literature. 

The Gryphon Award, which includes a $1,000 prize, is given annually by the Center for Children’s Books. This year’s committee was chaired by Deborah Stevenson, director of the Center for Children’s Books, and Kate Quealy-Gainer, assistant editor of the Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books.

The prize is awarded to the author of an outstanding English language work of fiction or non-fiction for which the primary audience is children in kindergarten through fourth grade, and which best exemplifies those qualities that successfully bridge the gap in difficulty between books for reading aloud to children and books for practiced readers. With a core of regular committee members, the award has become a way to contribute to an ongoing conversation about literature for inexperienced readers and to draw attention to the literature that offers, in many different ways, originality, accessibility, and high quality for that audience.

“Battle Bunny is both a sendup of saccharine period picture books and a tribute to kid invention,” says Stevenson, “The story follows young Alex’s savage textual and illustrative transformation of a treacly bunny tale into a saga of a thwarted attempt at world rabbit domination.”

“As funny and subversive as it is, the book is also an exercise in the technical skills in reading and writing,” says Quealy-Gainer, “When Alex changes ‘birthday’ into ‘battle’ and revises the various commas and exclamation marks, readers find themselves practicing literacy skills even as they giggle over Battle Bunny’s antics.”

Three Gryphon Honors also were named:

[image4-right]Year of the Jungle (Scholastic), written by Suzanne Collins and illustrated by James Proimos, includes cartoonish illustrations that lend both accessibility and emotional heft to this subtle but poignant tale of a young girl’s difficulty dealing with her father’s absence in the Vietnam War.

[image3-left]Lulu and the Dog From the Sea (Whitman), written by Hilary McKay and illustrated by Priscilla Lamont, hits all the right notes from its high-spirited heroine to its breezy sentence structure to its kid-friendly plot, making this tale of pet rescue one to recommend. 

[image2-right]Like Bug Juice on a Burger (Amulet/Abrams), written by Julie Sternberg and illustrated by Matthew Cordell, is a compassionate, pragmatic look at young Eleanor’s struggle to adjust at summer camp, and Sternberg’s ragged right prose perfectly captures the girl’s tentative but heartfelt voice.

The Gryphon Award was established in 2004 as a way to focus attention on transitional reading, "which includes a variety of wonderful books that meet children where they are and encourage them to stretch a little farther at a key stage in their development as readers,” Stevenson said.

The award committee consists of members drawn from the youth services faculty of GSLIS, the editorial staff of the Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, public and school librarians, and the library and education community at large.

The award is sponsored by the Center for Children's Books and funded by the Center for Children's Books Gryphon Fund. Income from the fund supports the annual Gryphon Lecture as well as the Gryphon Award for children's literature.

Gifts may be made to the fund by contacting Diana Stroud in the GSLIS Office of Advancement at 217-244-9577.

Updated on
Backto the news archive

Related News

iSchool instructors ranked as excellent

Fifty-six iSchool instructors were named in the University's List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent for Fall 2024 and Winter 2024-2025. The rankings are released every semester, and results are based on the ratings from the Instructor and Course Evaluation System (ICES) questionnaire forms maintained by Measurement and Evaluation in the Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning. 

iSchool Building

Scholarship alleviates financial burden for returning student

During her time as an active-duty Naval Officer, Anna Hartman realized that she had a passion for helping others and building community. That passion, combined with a lifelong love of reading, led her to pursue an MSLIS degree at the University of Illinois. Hartman is receiving support for her studies through the Balz Endowment Fund, which was established by Nancy (BA LAS '70, MSLIS '72) and Dan (BS Media '68, MS Media '72) Balz to help make education more affordable for returning students.

Anna Hartman

Faculty receive support for AI-related projects from new pilot program

Associate Professor Yun Huang, Assistant Professor Jiaqi Ma, and Assistant Professor Haohan Wang have received computing resources from the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR), a two-year pilot program led by the National Science Foundation in partnership with other federal agencies and nongovernmental partners. The goal of the pilot is to support AI-related research with particular emphasis on societal challenges. Last month, awardees presented their research at the NAIRR Pilot Annual Meeting.

Winning exhibits highlight evolution of music media and Uni High magazine

MSLIS students Monica Gil, Holly Bleeden, and Harrison Price were selected as winners of this year's Graduate Student Exhibit Contest, sponsored by the University of Illinois Library. Gil and Bleeden won first place for their exhibit, "Echoes of Time: The Evolution of Music Media," and Price won second place for his exhibit, "Unique-ly Illinois: Creative Writing from High School to Higher Education." The exhibits will be on display in the Marshall Gallery in the library through the end of March.

MSLIS students Monica Gil and Holly Bleeden standing next to their exhibit, "Echoes of Time: The Evolution of Music Media," at the Main Library.

Wei receives Amazon Post Internship Fellowship

PhD student Tianxin Wei has been awarded an Amazon Post Internship Fellowship, which will provide $20,000 in unrestricted funds and $20,000 in Amazon Web Services (AWS) credits to support Wei's research with his advisor, Professor Jingrui He. For the past two summers, Wei has served as an applied scientist intern at Amazon in Palo Alto, California. He has been part of a team that is working on search query understanding within Amazon apps and services, as well as developing shopping foundation models.

Tianxin Wei