I like it when history works out well. One hundred years ago this month, Bass Reeves passed away in Muskogee, Oklahoma, bring to an end one of the most remarkable stories in African- American history and in the history of the American West. And today, on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Bad News for Outlaws: The Remarkable Life of Bass Reeves, Deputy U. S. Marshal  by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson with illustrations by R. Gregory Christie has won the 2010 Coretta Scott King Author Award from the ALA.  Bass Reeves gets a gold medal to go with his gold badge. I like that.

I think I speak for everyone at Lerner in saying how proud we are of Vaunda and of the remarkable portrait of Bass she and Greg Christie created.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The cell-phone snap above is of the announcement from the ALA Midwinter meetings. (It’s probably the same cell phone that texted me at 5:20 a.m. Minnesota time to tell me Vaun had won. They ALA gets going early.)