Carter G. Woodson Award Winning Books

As of 2001 awards and honors are given in the following categories, Elementary (K-6), Middle (5-8), and Secondary (7-12) grade level books.

Carter G. Woodson Seal

The National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) established the Carter G. Woodson Book Awards for the most distinguished books appropriate for young readers that depict ethnicity in the United States. First presented in 1974, this award is intended to “encourage the writing, publishing, and dissemination of outstanding social studies books for young readers that treat topics related to ethnic minorities and race relations sensitively and accurately.” Books relating to ethnic minorities and the authors of such books rarely receive the recognition they merit from professional organizations. By sponsoring the Carter G. Woodson Awards, NCSS gives wide recognition to and encourages these authors and publishers. Here is a printable list of all the award winning books. Learn more at NCSS’s website.

Also check out our list of Top 100+ Recommended African-American Children’s Books, some are also CSK Award winning titles.

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7 Award Winning and Honored Books for 1998

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Honor Book

Book Description: 
”Now that it’s all over, I don’t find life so good in my old age, as it was in slavery time when I was chillun, down on Marster’s plantation,” said James Bolton when he was interviewed as an old man in Georgia.

Not all memories of slavery were as good as Bolton’s, and this book shows many aspects of plantation life as seen through the eyes of men and women who were children when slavery came to an end, in 1865. Mingo White recounts how he was sent away from his parents when he was four or five, so that he didn’t recognize his mother when she came to find him. Tempie Durham tells of her wedding, at which she wore a white dress and veil and her mistress played the wedding march on the piano. Lucinda Davis talks about growing up as a slave to a Creek Indian family. Descriptions of children’s games contrast with accounts of brutal mistreatment, but most affecting of all are the stories of what it was like when slaves suddenly found themselves free to go where they pleased, after a lifetime of being the property of their masters.

Honor Book

Book Description: 
Recreates the life of writer and lecturer Gertrude Bonnin, also known as Zitkala S+a5a, a Native American activist and reformer of the early twentieth century, who fought for legislation to help better the lives of her people.”

Honor Book

Book Description: 
Tells the story of a leading poet of the Harlem Renaissance during the 1920s who devoted his life to writing about the black experience in America.

Honor Book

Book Description: 
Beginning readers seeking an accessible biography will be captivated by the story of the remarkable Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862 1931), a teacher, journalist, lecturer, and civil rights leader. In clear, easy-to-read prose, award-winning author Angela Shelf Medearis shows how Wells-Barnett triumphed over adversity throughout her life and became a respected leader. Orphaned at the age of fourteen, with five younger siblings to care for, she taught school to support her family. Later Wells-Barnett became part-owner of an African-American newspaper and led a crusade against lynching, endangering her life. A champion of the cause of suffrage for women, she was an outspoken, unusual woman whose courage to seek the truth and fight for justice made history. Angela Shelf Medearis is the author of thirty-three books, including Dare to Dream: Coretta Scott King and the Civil Rights Movement, which Booklist called “a concise,engaging biography for young readers.”

Honor Book

Book Description: 
When Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white man on December 1, 1955, she made history. Her brave act sparked the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott and brought the civil rights movement to national attention. In simple, lively language, Rosa Parks describes her life from childhood to the present and recounts the events that shook the nation. Her story is powerful, inspiring and unforgettable.An NCSS-CBC Notable Children’s Trade Book in the Field of Social Studies

Honor Book

Book Description: 
Describes life on a Crow Indian reservation in Montana, and the importance these tribes place on buffalo, which are once again thriving in areas where the Crow live.

Elementary Award

Book Description: 
”Leon’s Story is a powerful, wonderful thing!” — Nikki Giovanni

I remember that as a young boy I used to look in the mirror and I would curse my color, my blackness. But in those days they didn’t call you “black.” They didnt say “minority.” They called us “colored” or “nigger.”

Leon Tillage grew up the son of a sharecropper in a small town in North Carolina. Told in vignettes, this is his story about walking four miles to the school for black children, and watching a school bus full of white children go past. It’s about his being forced to sit in the balcony at the movie theater, hiding all night when the Klansmen came riding, and worse. Much worse. But it is also the story of a strong family and the love that bound them together. And, finally, it’s about working to change an oppressive existence by joining the civil rights movement. Edited from recorded interviews conducted by Susan L. Roth, Leon’s story will stay with readers long after they have finished his powerful account.