Going North (Bccb Blue Ribbon Picture Book Awards (Awards))

An African American family becomes a new kind of pioneer

Leaving behind Big Mama, loving relatives, and the familiar red soil and cotton fields of Alabama, Jessie and her family are going north to Nebraska. They are pioneers searching for a better life, one with decent schools and jobs. But traveling through the segregated South is difficult for an African American family in the 1960s. With most public places reserved for "whites only," where will they stop to get gas and food?

Lyrical free verse and evocative paintings capture the rhythm of the road and a young girl's longing as she wonders: Will I like it there? Will I like the North?

Janice N. Harrington grew up in Vernon, Alabama. When she was eight years old, her family moved to Lincoln, Nebraska. A lover of stories both written and oral, she came to her interest in writing through childhood favorites such as Jane Eyre, Charlotte’s Web, and the Greek myths she came upon in an antiquated set of the Book of Knowledge encyclopedia.

Ms. Harrington received the Ezra Jack Keat’s New Writer Award for her first picture book, Going North. The book, which Kirkus Reviews called “gorgeous,” and School Library Journal described as “a solid choice for readers,” was named a Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books Blue Ribbon Book, a Kirkus Reviews Editor’s Choice, and a Booklist Editors’ Choice. Her second picture book, The Chicken-Chasing Queen of Lamar County, has already received much acclaim, being selected for Fanfare, The Horn Book’s Honor List and named a Kirkus Reviews Editor’s Choice.

Ms. Harrington is also a nationally known storyteller who has been featured at the National Storytelling Festival, a widely published poet, and a children’s librarian with over twenty-two years’ experience as a youth advocate. She lives in Champaign, Illinois.

Jerome Lagarrigue received the Coretta Scott King / John Steptoe Award for New Talent for his illustrations for Freedom Summer by Deborah Wiles. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.