2021 Jefferson Cup Award Winners and Honors Announced

Jacob Riis’s Camera: Bringing Light to Tenement Children and We Are Not Free win 2021 Jefferson Cup Award.  

The Jefferson Cup Committee is pleased to announce their selections for the 2021 winning and honor titles. The 2021 Jefferson Cup Award winner for Young Readers is Jacob Riis’s Camera: Bringing Light to Tenement Children, by Alexis O’Neill, Illustrated by Gary Kelley. The 2021 Jefferson Cup Award winner for Young Adult Readers is We Are Not Free by Traci Chee.
 
Jacob Riis’s Camera: Bringing Light to Tenement Children (Calkins Creek) reveals the lives of tenement dwellers as seen through the eyes, heart and camera of Jacob Riis. Jacob Riis was an immigrant in 19th-century New York who shined a light on the harsh conditions of the tenements. When his writings were largely ineffective, Riis came up with the idea of using flash photography to attract attention to the horrendous conditions. Jacob Riis worked tirelessly as an activist for better living conditions, and his work is captured within the artistry of Gary Kelley whose use of light and dark colors bring to mind Riis’s black and white photographs.
 
We Are Not Free by Traci Chee (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) uses fourteen points of view to tell the fictional story of a group of Nisei, second-generation Japanese American citizens, forced into incarceration camps after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Chee drew on her own family history to depict what happened to far too many Japanese Americans during World War II. While Chee presents a part of history unknown to many Americans, she also reveals what it is like to be a teenager in an internment camp. This is a beautifully written book revealing the stark realities of racism and the denial of rights to one group of citizens very seldom discussed in history books.

Honor Titles

Echo Mountain by Lauren Wolk (Dutton Books for Young Readers) was chosen as an honor book for young readers.
 
Blood and Germs: The Civil War Battle Against Wounds and Disease by Hail Jarrow (Calkins Creek) and Snow Fell Three Graves Deep by Allan Wolf  (Candlewick Press) were chosen as honor books for young adult readers.