About the Center
The mission of the Bank Street Center for Children's Literature is to create, identify, and advocate for the highest quality literature for all children from infancy through adolescence. In so doing, we seek to help ensure that such literature is readily accessible to every child throughout America, and to foster in parents, educators, and policy makers a commitment to the principle that good literature is fundamental to literacy, learning, and social-emotional, and aesthetic development at all levels of childhood education.
Through the establishment of the Center, Bank Street seeks to address a growing challenge: the diminishing use of children's literature in literacy programs, particularly in the early grades. As a result, many children are finding it much more difficult to "engage" in their own learning. Engaging children in literature and learning is what the Bank Street Center for Children's Literature is all about. Learning to read gives a child a tool for acquiring information. Loving to read equips a child with a whole set of tools for developing a rich, imaginative, and fully experienced life.
The three distinguished affiliates of the new Center are:
The Bank Street Writers Lab: Bank Street founder Lucy Sprague Mitchell published her pioneering Here and Now Story Book, in 1921. It dealt with the everyday lives and concerns of children - a big departure from the era's fairy and morality tales. Deeply concerned with children's literature, Mrs. Mitchell created the Bank Street Writers Lab, a workshop for professional writers allied with Bank Street, in October 1937. Early members included Margaret Wise Brown, Ruth Krauss, Eve Merriam, Edith Thacher Hurd, Clement Hurd, Claudia Lewis, and Irma Simonton Black. A later member was Maurice Sendak. Over the years, other Lab members came to include many award winners, including Newbery winners Emily Neville and Joan Blos, and Caldecott winner Mordicai Gerstein. In the 1960's, Writers Lab members worked on The Bank Street Readers series, published by Macmillan, the first readers to feature the daily experiences of multi-ethnic urban children. The Readers changed the entire nature of early childhood literacy teaching, which until then featured only all white children in an all white suburb.
October 2007 is the 70th anniversary of the Bank Street Writers Lab; 2007 is also the 40th anniversary of The Bank Street Readers.
The Children's Book Committee (CBC) came to Bank Street in 1977. Founded in 1912 as an arm of the Child Study Association of America, its mandate was to help parents find appropriate books for children. At Bank Street, it continued and expanded that work with an annual annotated guide, The Best Children's Books of the Year, with data on more than 600 titles arranged by age (pre-school to 14) and categories. It also issues a once-every-three-years volume, Books to Read Aloud With Children of All Ages. The CBC also presents three annual children's book prizes in fiction, non-fiction, and poetry.
The Irma S. and James H. Black Picture Book Award was established in 1972 to honor the memory of Irma Simonton Black, a founding member of the Writers Lab, and that of her husband, James H. Black. Children in 13 schools vote to choose the winner and the two or three runners-up. The award medallion was designed by Irma's friend, Maurice Sendak (a former member of the Writers Lab), and depicts three dancing figures with books: Irma, Maurice's dog Jenny, and Maurice.
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