Press Releases
| For Immediate Release July 25, 2006 |
Contact: Kathryn Duryea (202) 277-2034 |
2006 JAMES MADISON BOOK AWARD WINNER
$10,000 Award Goes to Book about African American Girl’s
Childhood in New York in Mid-1800s
NEW YORK CITY – Lynne Cheney announced today that Maritcha: A Nineteenth-Century American Girl by Tonya Bolden would receive the fourth annual James Madison Book Award. Mrs. Cheney presented author Tonya Bolden the $10,000 prize at The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, located in New York City. Local students attended the award presentation.
“Tonya Bolden tells America’s stories in a captivating way,” said Mrs. Cheney. “Maritcha will help make American history come alive for young readers.”
Published in 2005 by Abrams Books for Young Readers, Maritcha tells the compelling story of a freeborn African American girl from her childhood days in New York City to her becoming the first black graduate of Providence High School in Rhode Island. Based upon Maritcha Rémond Lyons’s unpublished memoir, this expertly researched book embeds a young girl’s story into the context of the everyday life of free African Americans in New York City in the mid-1800s. “Maritcha merits remembrance,” Bolden writes, “Born free in a nation stained by slavery, where free blacks had few rights and rare respect, here was a girl determined to rise, to amount to something, determined to overcome.” Tonya Bolden also weaves the story of Maritcha’s life with critical events of the time, such as the Draft Riots of 1863. This book for middle school readers tells an inspiring, handsomely presented story of achievement in the face of adversity.
Mrs. Cheney established the James Madison Book Award in 2003 to present an annual prize of $10,000 to the book that best represents excellence in bringing knowledge and understanding of American history to children ages 5 to 14. To underwrite the award, Mrs. Cheney donated $100,000 from the profits of her children’s books, America: A Patriotic Primer and A is for Abigail: An Almanac of Amazing American Women.
The James Madison Book Award Selection Committee chose Maritcha from submissions received from publishers for nonfiction books copyrighted in 2005. The Selection Committee also named three outstanding children’s books as “Honor Books”: Built to Last: Building America’s Amazing Bridges, Dams, Tunnels, and Skyscrapers (author: George Sullivan; publisher: Scholastic Nonfiction), The Forbidden Schoolhouse: The True and Dramatic Story of Prudence Crandall and Her Students (author: Suzanne Jurmain; publisher: Houghton Mifflin) and Photo By Brady: A Picture of the Civil War (author: Jennifer Armstrong; publisher: Atheneum).
Maritcha author Tonya Bolden is a graduate of Princeton University with an M.A. from Columbia University. Her published works include histories, novels, and anthologies as well as articles, reviews and reference material for adults and youth. Bolden resides in New York, N.Y.
The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem houses the unpublished memoir of Maritcha Lyons, the basis for Ms. Bolden’s book.
The James Madison Book Award Selection Committee is comprised of members of the sitting Advisory Council, a 37-member group made up of scholars, teachers, authors, parents and grandparents. The 2006 selection committee members were Lynne Cheney; Celeste Colgan of Denver, CO; Peggy Duckett of Philiadephia, PA; Peter Gibbon of Boston, MA; Wilfred McClay of Chattanooga, TN; and Christine Parker of Bethesda, MD. Mrs. Colgan chaired the committee.
“The committee members were struck by the author’s original account of a girl growing up in a conflicted time in America,” said Mrs. Colgan. “Middle schoolers will be captivated by the details of Maritcha’s life and the times in which she lived. A free African American in an era when many were enslaved, Maritcha was supported by her family and her community and grew up to teach others what she had been taught, ‘Aim high! Stand tall! Be strong! – and do.’”
The James Madison Book Award Fund is a separate fund of the Community Foundation of Jackson Hole, a Wyoming 501(c)(3) public foundation. For more information about the James Madison Book Award Fund, please visit www.jamesmadisonbookaward.org.
Lynne Cheney is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., whose work has long emphasized the importance of knowing American history and teaching it well. She is the author or co-author of nine books, including A Time for Freedom: What Happened When in America, When Washington Crossed the Delaware: A Wintertime Story for Young Patriots, A is for Abigail: An Almanac of Amazing American Women, and America: A Patriotic Primer, an alphabet book of the principles on which our nation was founded. She is married to Vice President Dick Cheney.
Learn more about the 2006 Award Winner.