University Park, PA -- Penn State's College of Education, the University Libraries, and the Pennsylvania Center for the Book are pleased to announce the winner of the 2002 Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award. This year's winner is Anna Grossnickle Hines for Pieces: A Year in Poems and Quilts (Greenwillow Books). Along with the award, Grossnickle will receive a $500 prize.

Established in 1993, the Lee Bennett Hopkins Award is presented annually to an American poet or anthologist for the most outstanding new book of children's poetry published in the previous calendar year. Additionally, judges gave honor awards to Linda Oatman High for A Humble Life: Plain Poems, illustrated by Bill Farnsworth (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.); Paul Janeczko for A Poke in the I: A Collection of Concrete Poems, illustrated by Chris Raschka (Candlewick Press); and Charles R. Smith Jr. for Short Takes: Fast-break Basketball Poetry (Dutton Books). The awards presentation will be Friday, April 5, 2002, at the Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel, adjacent to Penn State's University Park campus.

Hines created quilts to accompany the twenty seasonal poems in Pieces: A Year in Poems and Quilts. "This beautiful book brings together the wonder of seasons, the joy and preciseness of quilting, and the love of language, all within a well-balanced, carefully crafted (on several levels) collection that helps highlight quilting and the seasons as metaphors for the wide range of skillful 'pieces' necessary for writing strong poetry," said one judge about the book.

A Humble Life is a well-crafted collection of poetry set in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, that looks at the lives of the area's Mennonite and Amish people. A Poke in the I, edited by Janeczko, is a collection of thirty poems by various authors that "would probably be quite appealing set out on white pages, but here they are enhanced and made even more attractive to children by the playful, brightly patterned torn-paper collage of the illustrations." Short Takes is a collection of poems about basketball that, according to one judge, "would not, appropriately, stand still even for a second. The jazz-like impromptus and jerky internal rhymes captured the skill of the sport and kept my eyes moving across the page."

This prestigious award is named for Lee Bennett Hopkins, an internationally renowned educator, poet, anthologist, and passionate advocate of poetry for young people. Selected by a panel of nationally recognized teachers, librarians, and scholars, the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award is the only award of its kind in the United States and is considered a great honor among children's poets, publishers, and educators. Daniel Hade, associate professor, and Steven Herb, librarian, share joint administration of the annual Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award.

The judges for this year's Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award were Bev Gallagher, a third-grade teacher at Princeton Day School in Hopewell, New Jersey; Floyd Dickman, a specialist in children's literature and adjunct professor of library and information science at Kent State University in Columbus, Ohio; Karen Breen, a children's editor with Kirkus Reviews in Huntington, New York; Marjorie Maddox-Hafer, a professor of English at Lock Haven University in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania; and Richard Ammon, Jr., an associate professor of education and behavioral sciences at Penn State Harrisburg in Middletown, Pennsylvania.

For more information about the contest and awards, contact Steven L. Herb, director, Pennsylvania Center for the Book, at 814-863-2141 or visit the Web site—www.pabook.libraries.psu.edu.

Inquiries regarding the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award Endowment should be directed to Penn State's Development Offices—Ellie Dietrich, College of Education, at 814-863-2146 or Selden Smith, the University Libraries, at 814-865-2258.