A children’s picture book that encourages children to know their history
will represent Nebraska at the 2021 National Book Festival. The Nebraska
Center for the Book selected Your Bridge to History by Portia
Love and Preston Love, Jr. (Preston Publishing, 2019) as the state’s selection
for the National Book Festival’s
Great Reads from Great Places
programing. Each state selects one book about the state, or by an author
from the state, that is a good read for children or young adults. The book
will be featured in the Great Reads from Great Places – History Edition author panel, with
links on the websites of both the National Book Festival and
Nebraska Center for the Book.
The National Book Festival will run Sept. 17-26, with the theme “Open a
Book, Open the World.”
This book, written by Portia and Preston Love, Jr. and illustrated by Regina
Jeanpierre, takes you along with the Black Votes Matter Tour across the
American South. The characters tour sites where individuals and
organizations focus on Civil Rights, Voting Rights, and Black History in the
United States. Beautiful illustrations depict the pictures the tour
participants experienced along the way. QR codes are included to take
readers to websites that are important to further learning. Nebraska’s
Great Reads from Great Places book
is chosen from the previous year’s Nebraska Book Award winners and this book
was awarded the 2020 Nebraska Book Award in the Children’s Picture Book
category. Entries for the Nebraska Book Awards are accepted every year
between March 1st and June 30th - see
http://centerforthebook.nebraska.gov/awards/nebookawards.html.
The National Book Festival will feature virtual presentations by
award-winning authors, poets, and illustrators. Find out more about the 2021
National Book Festival (including a list of featured authors) at
www.loc.gov/events/2021-national-book-festival/about-this-event/.
The Nebraska Center for the Book is housed at the Nebraska Library
Commission and brings together the state’s readers, writers, booksellers,
librarians, publishers, printers, educators, and scholars to build the
community of the book, supporting programs to celebrate and stimulate public
interest in books, reading, and the written word. The Nebraska Center for the Book
is supported by the national Center for the Book in the Library of Congress and the
Nebraska Library Commission.
As the state library agency, the Nebraska Library Commission is an advocate
for the library and information needs of all Nebraskans. The mission of the
Library Commission is statewide promotion, development, and coordination of
library and information services, “bringing together people and
information.”
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The most up-to-date news releases from the Nebraska Library Commission are
always available on the Library Commission Website,
http://nlc.nebraska.gov/publications/newsreleases
.