Winners of the 2018 Upstanders Awards were honored on May 21st at the 11th Annual Upstanders Awards Ceremony.
Tony Abbott was presented with the Horace Mann Upstanders Book Award for The Summer of Owen Todd. “If a difficult story is told truthfully and with respect, readers will respond with truth and respect, not only for themselves, but for the world we live in,” 
said Abbot.
Mordicai Gerstein author of The Boy and the Whale was presented with the Horace Mann Upstanders Lifetime Achievement Award. “I want my books to provoke questions, things to think about: why are things the way they are? Can they be different? What might I do to make a difference? Your answers are important,” said Gerstein.
These two authors and agents of change also signed books and posed for photos. Students in the Education Department took a bus from the Antioch campus to the ceremony which was held at Children’s Book World, an award-winning bookstore in West Los Angeles.
The Upstander Awards honor children’s literature that best exemplifies the ideals of social action and in turn encourages young readers to become agents of change themselves by standing up to injustice. The Upstander Awards are sponsored by the Education Department.
