The New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association has long planned to honor Politics and Prose owners Carla Cohen and Barbara Mead at this year’s trade show in Atlantic City for their impact on the organization and on Washington bookselling. Now, in addition, to mark Cohen’s contributions to NAIBA, the organization is launching an ongoing children’s book award in her name, the NAIBA Carla Cohen Free Speech Award.

As NAIBA acting president Lucy Kogler, manager of Talking Leaves Bookstore in Buffalo, N.Y., noted in a letter to booksellers: “Educating children about their rights by putting the books into their hands that will allow them to question, imagine, and dream is essential to the survival of independent bookstores and dare I say, humanity.”

This year’s selection is Pam Muñoz Ryan’s The Dreamer, illustrated by Peter Sis about how Neftali Reyes, despite the opposition of his authoritarian father, became one of the most widely read poets in the world, Pablo Neruda. A donation will be given to ABFFE in their names.