Educational Resources for Coretta Scott King Award-Winning Titles

SUSAN POLOS

While there are many lists of award-winning books for young people online, there’s only one list of award-winning books that I know of that includes a discussion guide for each title: The Coretta Scott King (CSK) Book Awards.

The Coretta Scott King Book Awards are awarded each year to outstanding African American authors and illustrators of books that celebrate the African American experience. For more details about the history of the award, watch the embedded video produced by the Los Angeles Public Library. Coretta Scott King Book Awards jury members create discussion guides for these books, which are available online as educational resources.

The History of the Coretta Scott King Awards, Los Angeles Public Library

The Coretta Scott King Book Awards is an initiative under the Ethnic & Multicultural Information Exchange Round Table (EMIERT) of the American Library Association (ALA). CSK Immediate Past-President Dr. Claudette McLinn notes that the Discussion Guides have been created since 2000, and currently all Discussion Guides from 2009 to 2019  are available on the CSK website.

Each Discussion Guide includes summaries, activities and discussion questions, as well as related CSK titles for that year’s CSK Author Award, CSK Author Honor Awards, CSK Illustrator Award, CSK Illustrator Honor Awards, and Steptoe Awards for New Talent (Author and Illustrator), as well as information about the year’s Virginia Hamilton Lifetime Achievement Award winner.

Out of Wonder

For example, Ekua Holmes won the 2018 CSK Illustrator Award. That year’s Discussion Guide suggests an activity for Out of Wonder: Poems Celebrating Poets (written by Kwame Alexander with Chris Colderley and Marjory Wentworth and illustrated by Ekua Holmes, Candlewick Press) that involves creating a collage and then writing a poem, as well as another activity requiring research. These projects can be as simple or complex as one chooses to make them.

From the CSK Book Awards 2018 Discussion Guide

Crown

For 2018 CSK Author and Illustrator Honor book Crown: An Ode to the Fresh Cut (written by Derrick Barnes and illustrated by Gordon C. James, a Denene Millner Book, published by Bolden, an Agate Imprint), a suggested activity is sharing a story of an “experience that made you feel special, valued, and ‘ready to take on the world.’” Other books listed allow readers to then compare and contrast Crown to similar books that also won CSK book awards.

From the CSK Book Awards 2018 Discussion Guide

The CSK Discussion Guides are not the only educational resources available on the CSK website. There are also resources from publishers (Lee and Low) and a link to TeachingBooks.net, a curricular resource for teaching young people’s literature. TeachingBooks was founded by Nick Glass, who is also a member of the CSK Book Awards Executive Committee and Chair of the CSK Membership Committee.

It’s worth noting that Glass is offering TeachingBooks’ “Book and Reading Engagement Kit: Home Edition” for free until September 15 for remote learning. TeachingBooks offers many resources for all CSK Award-winning titles, and these are included in the engagement kit.  The resources include original material, interviews, audiobook excerpts, pronunciation guides, interviews and book trailers.

The Coretta Scott King Book Awards website offers a wealth of online material for teaching even beyond the stated educational resources. Whether simply looking through the list of award winning books or reading about the history of the CSK Book Awards, there is so much to learn. And although the 2020 CSK Book Discussion Guide is not yet posted (as a jury member, I contributed to it and look forward to seeing it online), perhaps students might create their own guides to one of the winning titles, like New Kid by Jerry Craft (2020 CSK Author winner) or The Undefeated by Kwame Alexander, illustrated by Kadir Nelson (2020 CSK Illustrator winner)

Editorial Note to CLA Members

In June 2019, the CLA Student Committee organized a Webinar featuring Jonda McNair titled 50 and Fabulous: The Coretta Scott King Book Award. The Webinar is part of CLA's library of Members-Only Content.