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2012 Ezra Jack Keats Award Winners

2012 EJK Award Poster

Press Release: 2012 Winners Announced

2012 Writer Award Winner

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Meg Medina

“I’m about strong girls, tough circumstances, and the connecting power of culture,” says Meg Medina about her books for young people. Her first picture book, which brings Meg the EJK New Writer Award for 2012, is based on her own memories of growing up in a storytelling Cuban family in New York. She was drawn to the genre, she says, because of its hopefulness. Meg lives with her family in Richmond, Virginia. Her latest book, The Girl Who Could Silence the Wind, was published in early 2012.

Tía Isa Wants a Car

Candlewick Press

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A young girl in Queens, New York, and her aunt Isa save up for a car that will take them to the beach—and remind them of the family that is still far away.

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2012 Illustrator Award Winner

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Jenny Sue Kostecki-Shaw

“Same, same but different” is a phrase Jenny Sue Kostecki-Shaw learned while teaching in Nepal and traveling in India and Thailand—a way of looking at different cultures and of bridging the distance between them. Jenny Sue has traveled extensively in Asia and currently lives in northern New Mexico with her family. She wrote and illustrated Same, Same but Different, which earns her both the EJK New Illustrator Award and a New Writer Honor.

Same, Same but Different

Christy Ottaviano Books/ Henry Holt

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Elliott, an American schoolboy, is a pen pal of Kailash, in India. Through their drawings and letters, these best friends share the similarities and differences of their worlds.

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2012 Award Honorees

Writer Award Honoree

Jenny Sue Kostecki-Shaw

Same, Same but Different

Elliott, an American schoolboy, is a pen pal of Kailash, in India. Through their drawings and letters, these best friends share the similarities and differences of their worlds.

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Writer Award Honoree

Nicola Winstanley

Cinnamon Baby

Marian, a gifted bread baker, marries and has a baby. After trying to calm her crying child for days, she uses her special skills to make everyone happy, including baby.

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Writer Award Honoree

Illustrator Award Honoree

Anna Witte (writer) and Micha Archer (illustrator)

Lola’s Fandango

Barefoot Books

Feeling outclassed by her big sister, Lola learns to dance flamenco to surprise her mother on her birthday. A musical CD of the book is included. 

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Illustrator Award Honoree

David Ercolini

Not Inside this House!

Orchard Books

In a rhyming book by Kevin Lewis, a boy explorer brings home increasingly larger animals—from an insect to a whale!—much to his mother’s dismay.

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