Claremont, Calif. (March 26, 2015)—Pitzer College Assistant Professor Emerita Jacqueline Levering Sullivan’s book, A Less Than Perfect Peace, has been selected as a Bank Street College’s Best Children’s Books of the Year, 2015 Edition.
A Less Than Perfect Peace, published by Eerdmans Book in 2014, is a sequel to her award-winning Annie’s War (Eerdmans, 2007). Set at the beginning of the Cold War, A Less than Perfect Peace picks up four years after the protagonist in Annie’s War, 14-year-old Annie Leigh Howard, welcomes her father back from World War II. Annie tries to help her father, who was blinded in the war, adjust to his new reality while she gets used to life in a new town. Through a growing friendship with Dutch refugees, she comes to understand the nature of sacrifice and that loss in wartime is not limited to those who fight on the battlefield.
Annie’s War, Levering Sullivan’s first published novel, is based on events from the writing professor’s childhood in the 1940s. The novel was a finalist for the 2009-10 Children’s Crown Award and received the Celebrate Literacy Award from the International Reading Association. Annie’s War also won the 2009 Kentucky Bluegrass Master List Award. The book was most recently selected for display in a World War II exhibition Walla Walla Goes to War in Washington.
The Best Children’s Books of the Year, 2015 Edition includes more than 600 titles chosen by the Children’s Book Committee as the best of the best published in 2014. In choosing books for the annual list, reviewers consider literary quality and excellence of presentation as well as the potential emotional impact of the books on young readers. Other criteria include credibility of characterization and plot, authenticity of time and place, age suitability, positive treatment of ethnic and religious differences, and the absence of stereotypes. Nonfiction titles are further evaluated for accuracy and clarity.
At Pitzer College, Jacqueline Levering Sullivan taught writing and founded and directed the College’s Writing Center.
