Press Release
Contact: Enid Goldberg, Director of Communications, Bank Street College of Education
Phone: 212-961-3325/ Fax: 212-961-3345
Email: Egoldberg@BankStreet.edu
Or contact: Linda Reing, Director of Special Events and Alumni Relations
Phone: 212-961-3332 / Email: lreing@BankStreet.edu

Bank Street College of Education presents The 34th Annual Irma S. and James H. Black Award For Excellence in Children's Literature

Date and Time: Thursday, May 11, 2006, at 8 a.m.

Place: The Harvard Club, North and Biddle Rooms, 27 West 44th Street, New York City.

Keynote Speaker: Harry Bliss, best-selling illustrator of Diary of a Worm, by Doreen Cronin; A Fine, Fine School, by Sharon Creech; Which Would You Rather Be?, by William Steig; and the forthcoming, A Very Brave Witch, by Alison McGhee. He is also an award-winning cartoonist and a cover artist for The New Yorker.

The Award: The Irma S. and James H. Black Award for Excellence in Children?s Literature commemorates Bank Street?s Irma Simonton Black, a writer and an editor of children?s books, a founding member of the Bank Street Writers Lab (which included such stars of children?s literature as Margaret Wise Brown and Maurice Sendak), and head of Bank Street?s Publications Division. Since 1992, the award has also honored her late husband, James H. Black.

The Judges: Children are the final judges for the Award. In addition to the Winner, there are three Honor Books.

Bank Street College of Education in New York City: Founded in 1916, and often called the ?most trusted name in early childhood education,? Bank Street today is a multifaceted learning community comprising the Graduate School, the Division of Continuing Education, and Children?s Programs (including the School for Children and the Family Center).

The mission of Bank Street College is to improve the education of children and their teachers by applying to the educational process all available knowledge about learning and growth, and by connecting teaching and learning meaningfully to the outside world. In so doing, we seek to strengthen not only individuals, but the community as well, including family, school, and the larger society in which adults and children, in all their diversity, interact and learn. We see in education the opportunity to build a better society.