National Book Award: Winners, Finalists, and Longlisted Titles
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The mission of the National Book Foundation is to celebrate the best of American literature, to expand its audience, and to enhance the cultural value of great writing in America. National Book Awards are given in five categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Translated Literature, and Young People’s Literature.
Here we highlight the winners of African descent. The first African-American writer to win a National Book Award was Ralph Ellison, in 1953, for Invisible Man.
One Book Honored by the National Book Foundation in 1975
Winner – Children’s Books
M.C. Higgins, The Great
List Price: $7.99
Aladdin (May 01, 2006)
Middle Grade, Fiction, Paperback, 288 pages
ISBN: 9781416914075Publisher: Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Book Description:
Mayo Cornelius Higgins sits on his gleaming, forty-foot steel pole, towering over his home on Sarah s Mountain. Stretched before him are rolling hills and shady valleys. But behind him lie the wounds of strip mining, including a mountain of rubble that may one day fall and bury his home.
M.C. dreams of escape for himself and his family. And, one day, atop his pole, he thinks he sees it two strangers are making their way toward Sarah s Mountain. One has the ability to make M.C. s mother famous. And the other has the kind of freedom that M.C. has never even considered.
Mayo Cornelius Higgins sits on his gleaming, forty-foot steel pole, towering over his home on Sarah s Mountain. Stretched before him are rolling hills and shady valleys. But behind him lie the wounds of strip mining, including a mountain of rubble that may one day fall and bury his home.
M.C. dreams of escape for himself and his family. And, one day, atop his pole, he thinks he sees it two strangers are making their way toward Sarah s Mountain. One has the ability to make M.C. s mother famous. And the other has the kind of freedom that M.C. has never even considered.

