2015 Youth Media Awards Announced

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Congratulations to all of the American Library Association award winners!  The 2015 Youth Media Awards were announced on Monday, Feb. 2 during ALA’s Midwinter Meeting in Chicago.  Several of our friends won major awards.  A donor to the Northeast Children’s Literature Collection, Weston Woods Studio, Inc., received the Andrew Carnegie Medal honoring the most outstanding video productions for children released in the previous year.  The winners are Paul R. Gagne and Melissa Reilly Ellard, producers of Me…Jane, the adaption of Patrick McDonnell’s Caldecott Honor book for 2012 about Jane Goodall.

University of Connecticut’s Professor Emerita Marilyn Nelson received the Coretta Scott King (Author) Honor Book Award for How I Discovered Poetry, illustrated by Hadley Hooper and published by Dial Books.  Donald Crews, who participated in the CT Children’s Book Fair in 1997, is the winner of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, which honors an author or illustrator who had made “a substantial and lasting contribution to literature for children.” (ALA.org).

Natalie Lloyd’s first novel, A Snicker of Magic, was a hit at the 2014 CT Children’s Book Fair as was Natalie herself.  The audiobook produced by Scholastic Audiobooks was awarded the Odyssey Award, for being one of the best audiobooks produced in English in the U.S.  Another Book Fair participant from 2003, Ann M. Martin, was awarded the Schneider Family Book Award for Rain Reign.  The Schneider Family honors books embodying “an artistic expression of the disability experience.” (ALA.org).

Mo Willems, another member of the NCLC and Book Fair family, won a Theodor Seuss Geisel Honor Award for his Waiting is not Easy! published by Hyperion Books for Children.  Len Vlahos presented at the Book Fair in 2014 and was a finalist for the 2015 William C. Morris Award, given to a first-time author writing for teens.  NCLC donor and Book Fair participant Emily Arnold McCully was a finalist for the YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults for her work Ida M. Tarbell: the Woman who Challenged Big Business-and Won!

For a complete listing of the 2015 Youth Media Awards, visit the American Library Association’s site.  Congratulations, everyone!

 

Alan Thacker Busby, the university’s first African-American student

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Alan Thacker Busby, the university's first African-American student, 1990

In 1914 Alan Thacker Busby of Worcester, Massachusetts, enrolled at the Connecticut Agricultural College, the first African-American student to attend what would become the University of Connecticut.  He worked his way through college by milking cows, feeding hogs and cutting ice from the campus pond and was an honor student and a member of the football team his Junior year.  In 1918 became the college’s first African-American graduate. After he graduated from college he served in World War I as a member of the Army’s all-black Field Artillery Unit, which stayed in France months after the war ended. After his military service he was an Animal Husbandry professor at Bordentown Industrial School in New Jersey, Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College in Alcorn, Mississippi, and Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri.

Busby Suites, a dormitory on the Storrs campus, was named in his honor.

This photograph shows Prof. Busby back at the University of Connecticut, when he returned to his alma mater in Fall 1990 to act as Grand Marshall of the Homecoming Parade.

Larry Eigner letters published in Poetry Magazine

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Eigner_12-46-55Six letters by poet Larry Eigner from 1954 to 1964 are published for the first time in the December 2014 issue of Poetry Magazine, including a letter from Larry Eigner to Charles Olson dated October 20, 1956.  The letter, from the Charles Olson Research Collection housed here in Archives and Special Collections, was selected for Poetry Magazine by co-editors Jennifer Bartlett and George Hart.

Jennifer Bartlett, a poet who is currently writing a biography of Larry Eigner, was awarded a travel fellowship by the Archives to use the Larry Eigner Papers.   Her work reflects a fresh and growing attention on the life and poetry of Larry Eigner that has emerged in recent years.

Larry Eigner (1927–1996) wrote over three thousand poems on a manual Royal typewriter and was an energetic letter-writer.  He published more than 40 collections of poetry, among them From the Sustaining Air (1953), Another Time in Fragments (1967), Things Stirring / Together / or Far Away (1974), now there’s-a-morning-hulk of the sky (1981), and Waters / Places / A Time (1983).

George Hart writes in the Introduction to the letters:

Throughout the fifties, Eigner absorbed Olson’s theory of Projective Verse, and he was grouped with the Black Mountain poets in Donald Allen’s groundbreaking The New American Poetry anthology in 1960. Of the poets in this group — Olson, Creeley,Robert Duncan, and Denise Levertov (Corman chose not to be included in the anthology) — Eigner might be the one who put Olson’s theories to work most productively. Projective Verse, with its emphasis on the exchange of energy between poet and reader, and the typewriter as a means of graphing or scoring words on the space of the page, seems particularly well-suited to Eigner’s embodiment and temperament. The fact that Olson put so much stress on the stance of the poet and the poet’s breath as a form of measure, which might seem to discourage someone like Eigner who had difficulty walking and speaking, makes Eigner’s achievement even more impressive. In excerpting Eigner’s correspondence for this special feature,Jennifer Bartlett and I have chosen to focus on passages in which he writes about, or directly to, Olson regarding his poetry, poetics, and other Black Mountain poets.

 

 

Considering a degree in archival science?

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mosaic-fellows-08-15-2014-craig-huey-photographyStudents and emerging professionals from traditionally underrepresented racial and ethnic minority groups interested in pursuing a masters degree in archival science are eligible for the Society of American Archivists/Association of Research Libraries Mosaic Program.  The Program provides tuition stipends, practical work experience, career placement assistance and leadership development.  The Call for Applications was announced this week.  Applications are due by February 28, 2015.

Read about the current group of Mosaic Fellows — and details about the program at ARL/SAA Mosaic Program.

Acknowledgment from a Strochlitz awardee

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Dr. Craig J. Peariso, a Strochlitz awardee from a few years ago, has had his book Radical theatrics: Put-ons, politics and the Sixties published by the University of Washington Press.  Focusing on left-wing political activism of the 1960s, Dr. Peariso argues that “these over-the-top antics were far more than just the spontaneous actions of a self-indulgent radical impulse” (jacket flap).  Having done exhaustive research in the Archives’ Hoffman Family Papers, Dr. Peariso writes in his acknowledgement: “Archivists at numerous libraries have also played a key role in the completion of this work.  Specifically, I would like to thank Terri Goldich and the staff at the University of Connecticut’s Thomas J. Dodd Research Center.  Their award of a [Rose and] Sigmund Strochlitz Travel Grant and their assistance in navigating the Hoffman Family Papers were vital at the earliest stages of my research.”  Thank you, Dr. Peariso, for confirming for us how valuable the Strochlitz grants are in support of academic research and scholarship.

Reading Room Closed December 22, 2014 to January 4, 2015

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The Archives and Special Collections Reading Room in the Dodd Research Center will be closed December 22, 2014 through January 4, 2015.  The Reading Room will re-open on January 5, 2015 with regularly scheduled hours Monday through Friday, 9:00a.m. to 4:00p.m.

For more information about Reading Room hours and policies, contact the Reference Desk in Archives & Special Collections at 860.486.2524 or email us at archives@uconn.edu.

 

Farewell to Norman Bridwell, creator of Clifford the Big Red Dog | NE Children’s Lit Collection

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Norman Ray Bridwell of Edgartown, who brought delight to millions of readers young and old as the author of Clifford the Big Red Dog series of books, died on Friday, December 12, at Martha’s Vineyard Hospital. He was 86. Norman Bridwell was born in Kokomo, Indiana, in 1928, according to a biography by Scholastic Books. He studied at the John Herron Art Institute in Indianapolis and Cooper Union Art School in New York before working as a commercial artist for 12 years.  Read More >

Farewell to Norman Bridwell, creator of Clifford the Big Red Dog, dead at 86

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Article by The Martha’s Vineyard Times – Dec 16, 2014

Norman Bridwell poses with his beloved creation, Clifford the Big Red Dog.

Norman Ray Bridwell of Edgartown, who brought delight to millions of readers young and old as the author of Clifford the Big Red Dog series of books, died on Friday, December 12, at Martha’s Vineyard Hospital. He was 86.

Norman Bridwell in his Edgartown studio. File photo by Ralph Stewart.

Norman Bridwell was born in Kokomo, Indiana, in 1928, according to a biography by Scholastic Books. He studied at the John Herron Art Institute in Indianapolis and Cooper Union Art School in New York before working as a commercial artist for 12 years.

In 1962 Mr. Bridwell found himself having to support a wife and infant daughter on extra money he picked up doing freelance artwork. He considered supplementing his income by illustrating picture books. An editor at Harper & Row advised him that he might find success by writing a story about one of his pictures. Because of his young daughter, Bridwell chose to write a story about an illustration he had made of a little girl and a big red bloodhound. He decided to make the dog very big and more of a general, all-around dog instead of a bloodhound. Mr. Bridwell wanted to name the dog Tiny, but his wife thought the name too boring. She suggested the name Clifford, after an imaginary play friend from her own childhood. With that settled, Norman Bridwell decided to name the little girl in his book after his own daughter, Emily Elizabeth, and within a few days he completed his story. Three weeks after submitting his story and illustrations to Scholastic Books, the publishers called with an offer to publish his work.

Forty titles and 60 million copies later, Clifford the Big Red Dog is a well-known and beloved character to the preschool set.

Norman Bridwell gave generously of his time and was an annual contributor to the Possible Dreams auction, the major fundraiser for Martha’s Vineyard Community Services, the Island’s social services umbrella agency.

He was the husband of Norma (Howard) Bridwell and father of Tim Bridwell and Emily Bridwell Merz. A memorial service will be held in the summer of 2015 and a complete obituary will follow in a future edition of The Times.

Arrangements are under the care of the Chapman, Cole and Gleason Funeral Home, Edgartown Road, Oak Bluffs. Visit www.ccgfuneralhome.com for online guest book and information.

Activist, author, secretary — she’s done it all

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Irena Urdang deTour, 2013

Irena Urdang deTour, 2013

Ninety years ago today, Irena Ehrlich vel Sluszny Urdang deTour was born in Warsaw, Poland, the eldest daughter of Seweryn and Felicia (Lubelczyk) Ehrlich vel Sluszny.  Experiencing the tragedies of war first hand, Irena emigrated to the United States in 1947 and has been active involved in many activities ever since.  To honor Ms. deTour’s extraordinary ninety years of experiences, Archives & Special Collections has installed a small exhibit illustrating her family heritage, World War II era experiences and interest in documenting and supporting research related to the Holocaust and its survivors.  Items on display are from her personal collection as well as materials that have been donated to the University of Connecticut.

Portion of deTour exhibit

Portion of deTour exhibit

Ms. deTour is the widow of Laurence Urdang and the proud mother of two UConn graduates, Alexandra and Nicole, and three grandchildren.

The exhibit is open and available for viewing during posted A&SC Reading Room hours through January 23, 2015.