Children’s literature selections honored for outstanding work addressing human rights issues and themes

"The photographs connect us closer to the experiences of migrants transiting through Panama: shoes laying across the migratory reception center, two children under a tent sponsored by U.S. and E.U. aid, a Bible drying under the sun, children playing in the river, and border officials' increasing presence in Darién."

A powerful memoir on the hardship and resilience of growing up in Louisiana in the 1950s & 1960s, Defiant: Growing Up in the Jim Crow South by author Wade Hudson is the 2022 recipient of the Malka Penn Award for Human Rights in Children’s Literature, presented by Dodd Human Rights Impact at UConn.

As directors of the Human Rights Institute and Dodd Impact, we condemn the war of aggression against Ukraine as a blatant violation of international law and as a catastrophic attack on human rights.