To honor the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. legacy, state organizers are promoting the Coretta Scott King Literacy Week Monday through Friday, Jan. 14-18.
The Arkansas Martin Luther King Jr. Commission (AMLKC), the Arkansas Department of Education, Power 92 Jams and RISE (Reading Initiative for Student Excellence) Arkansas are sponsoring tbe project, according to a news release.
Schools are asked to recruit volunteers to spend 20 to 30 minutes reading excerpts from specific books to honor the King legacy during King week.
The book title, author and awards won for the book include:
Mama Africa!: How Miriam Makeba Spread Hope With Her Song by Katheryn Erskine (A Coretta Scott King John Steptoe New Talent Illustrator Award Winner);
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Piecing Me Together by Renée Watson (A Coretta Scott King Author Award Winner, A Newbery Honor Book and New York Times bestseller);
Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds (A Coretta Scott King Honor Book, A Newbery Honor Book, A Printz Honor Book, A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner for Young Adult Literature, Longlisted for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, Winner of the Walter Dean Myers Award, An Edgar Award Winner for Best Young Adult Fiction, Parents’ Choice Gold Award Winner, An Entertainment Weekly Best YA Book of 2017, A Vulture Best YA Book of 2017 and A Buzzfeed Best YA Book of 2017);
Crown: An Ode to the Fresh Cut by Derrick Barnes (A Coretta Scott King Author Honor Book, A Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor Book, Winner of the 2018 Kirkus Prize for Young Readers, A Newbery Honor Book, A Caldecott Honor Book, An Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Award Book, An Ezra Jack Keats New Illustrator Honor Book and A Society of Illustrators Gold Medal Book);
Out of Wonder – Poems Celebrating Poets by Kwame Alexander, Chris Corderley and Marjory Heath Wentworth (A 2018 Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award Winner, A Newbery Medalist and a Caldecott Honoree’s New York Times best-selling ode to poets who have sparked a sense of wonder);
Before She Was Harriet by Lesa Cline-Ransome (A Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor Book);
The Stars Beneath Our Feet by David Barclay Moore (A Coretta Scott King John Steptoe Award Winner for New Talent).
To register a school for Coretta Scott King Literacy Week, contact AMLKC Executive Director DuShun Scarbrough at 1-888-290-KING.