Aesop Awards: The Press Release
Saturday, November 8, 2008 at 09:00AM [In case you don't want to read the whole press release, the winner is Ain't Nothing But a Man: My Quest to Find the Real John Henry by Scott Reynolds Nelson, with Marc Aronson (National Geographic, 2008). I'm intrigued by the book's subtitle; you can also read more about how Nelson and Aronson approach the topic of historical research for kids below.]
I recently requested a press release about the 2008 Aesop Awards from the folks at the American Folklore Society. Tim Lloyd, the executive director of AFS, responded with one; thank you. I'm reproducing it in full because I think it does a good job of explaining both the criteria for the award and how this year's award-winning choices meet or exceed those criteria. I'm also hoping to track down a copy of Anne Shelby's Adventures of Molly Whuppie (UNC Press, 2007), about which I had previously heard nothing. I think I would love it!
Awards
Reader Comments (3)
That sounds like a great award! never heard of it, never read the books you mention, but they sound good.
Pssst. I've got a storytelling blog, and I'd never heard of the Aesop Award before now. Can you believe it? Maybe had I gone to University of Indiana at Bloomington and majored in Folklore like I should of, I would have known about the award. (But then I would have never met Bede! So scratch that.)
I'm looking forward to the Mollie Whuppie book, as I've always been a fan of that intrepid girl who ran across the bridge of one hair and spouted funny stuff about Spain.
You know, I hadn't heard of the Aesop Awards myself, until I started looking around for an award that specifically recognized retellings of folk and fairy tales, which are sometimes overlooked by the major awards. The Aesop isn't really what I had in mind, so I might have to come up with an award for them myself. The Golden Acorn, maybe? I'm accepting nominations now!