The Ezra Jack Keats Awards were announced this week, as were the Los Angeles Times Book Awards finalists. In other news, Sesame Street episodes will be available at the Library of Congress, and the ALA has a new resource for library staff dealing with hate incidents.

Ezra Jack Keats Awards Announced

The winner of the 2019 Ezra Jack Keats Award for Writer is John Sullivan for Kitten and the Night Watchman. The winner of the Illustrator Award winner is Oge Mora for Thank you, Omu!

There were three writer honor winners: Juana Martinez-Neal for Alma and How She Got Her Name; Matt James forThe Funeral; and Keith Calabrese for Lena’s Shoes are Nervous. Two illustrator honors were named: Jessica Love for Julián is a Mermaid and Jane McGuinness for Prickly Hedgehogs!

The Ezra Jack Keats Awards recognize authors and illustrators who have “created an extraordinary children’s book that reflects the diverse nature of our culture.” To be eligible, book creators could not have had more than three children’s picture books published prior to the year under consideration.

The finalists for the Los Angeles Times Book Awards were also announced this week. In Young Adult Literature, the five finalists are: Elizabeth Acevedo, The Poet X; Kelly Loy Gilbert, Picture Us in the Light; Claire Hartfield, A Few Red Drops: The Chicago Race Riot of 1919; Jarrett Krosoczka, Hey, Kiddo!; and Emily X.R. Pan, Astonishing Color of After. The winners will be announced on April 12.

The American Library Association’s (ALA) Office for Diversity, Literacy and Outreach Services (ODLOS) and the Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) launched a new resource, Hateful Conduct in Libraries: Supporting Library Workers and Patrons .

Created collaboratively by the two offices, the document addresses a spike in reported hate crimes in libraries across the country. The offices began tracking such incidents in 2016.

Inquiries from libraries raised questions regarding patron behavior as well as the requirements of the First Amendment, and this resource aims to address those complicated issues “in a format designed to evolve in response to new controversies and changing conditions.” It outlines best practices on how to create environments that discourage hate speech and hateful conduct, what to do after an incident, and more. The document will be updated as needed. The ALA asks librarians to continue to report hate crimes in libraries via its online form: ala.org/tools/challengesupport/report .

Collaboration Across Borders: Opening Access to Holdings of the National Library of Cuba is the recipient of the Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS) Outstanding Collaboration Citation for 2019. The Outstanding Collaboration Citation “recognizes and encourages collaborative problem-solving efforts in the areas of acquisition, access, management, preservation or archiving of library materials. It recognizes a demonstrated benefit from actions, services or products that improve and benefit providing and managing library collections.”

Collaboration Across Borders: Opening Access to Holdings of the National Library of Cuba is a collaboration among the University of Florida (UF), the Biblioteca Nacional de Cuba José Martí (BNJM), Cuba’s national library, and Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) intended to expose the resources of the BNJM to scholars around the globe. This collaboration has resulted in the inclusion of over 135,000 Cuban records into WorldCat, with about 99,000 of them unique to BNJM.