2004 Lee Bennett Hopkins Award for Poetry Announced

I was delighted to hear that Stephen Mitchell has been awarded the 2004 Lee Bennett Hopkins Award for "The Wishing Bone and Other Poems." This delightful poetry collection was illustrated by Tom Pohrt and published by Candlewick Press. According to the judges, "Stephen Mitchell's fresh and inventive lyric and narrative children's poems are vastly entertaining and utterly accessible to children. They reveal greater complexities with each rereading, and their poetic integrity serves as a model for high-quality children's verse....Thought-provoking, fun verse with poetic integrity to boot. What more could one ask for in a volume of children's poems?" (from the media release).

The 2004 Honor Award winners are Diane Ackerman for "Animal Sense," illustrated by Peter Sís an (Knopf), Walter Dean Myers for "Blues Journey," illustrated by Christopher Myers (Holiday House), Samuel Jay Keyser for "The Pond God and Other Stories," illustrated by Robert Shetterly (Front Street), and Hope Anita Smith for "The Way A Door Closes," illustrated by Shane W. Evans (Henry Holt).

The Lee Bennett Hopkins Award was established in 1993. Since 1999, it has been administered by The Pennsylvania State University. Each year, the Award is presented to an American poet or anthologist for the most outstanding new book of children's poetry published during the previous year. Several Honor Award winners are also recognized. Winners are selected by a panel of nationally recognized teachers, librarians, and scholars. The Award winner receives a plaque and a $500 honorarium made possible by Lee Bennett Hopkins. One of the books of poems compiled by Hopkins is on my Top Picks list for Children's Books that Celebrate America. For more poetry for children, see my Poetry directory.recall recall