One of the two award-winning young adult books presented to the New Hanover County Library recently has a Columbus County connection.
The books, Half-Truths by Carol Baldwin in the young adult category, and Ripening Time by Patrice Gopo in the children’s literature category, will be placed in the library’s permanent collection. This is the first year two winners have been selected in each category.
Half-Truths is set in Tabor City and Charlotte and includes a fictional mentoring relationship between the teenaged heroine Katie
and Horace Carter, editor of the Tabor City Tribune. The book opens with one of the Ku Klux Klan parades that took place in the town during the segregation era. Carter won the Pulitzer Prize with Willard Cole of the News Reporter for their coverage of the KKK. Their reporting led to a broad FBI investigation that resulted in dozens of arrests and convictions of Klan members.
The books were chosen by the N.C. Division of the American Association of University Women. Wilmington resident and AAUW life member Mimi Cunningham presented copies to New Hanover County Public Library Director Melanie Morgan June 23.
“The New Hanover County Public Library is honored to welcome the AAUW Young People’s Literature Award titles as part of the library’s collection. We love the opportunity to celebrate and support North Carolina authors,” said Morgan.
Since 1953, AAUW-NC has partnered with the NC Literary and Historical Association to present an award each fall in recognition of the most significant work of original juvenile literature published over the past year by a North Carolina author. The full list of recipients may be found here: List of Awardees (from the AAUW NC website). In 2024, the NC Literary Review began managing the award selection https://nclr.ecu.edu/submissions/north-carolina-book-awards/.
For more information about the books, visit https://www.aauwnc.org/young-peoples-literature-awards-2025/
