My mother introduced me and my siblings to the wonderful weirdness in Howard R. Garis’s Uncle Wiggily tales. Garis gave us old Uncle Wiggily Longears and his adventures with Sammie and Susie Littletail, Johnnie and Billie Bushytail, the Wibblewobbles, Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy, and others. His stories clearly are meant for reading aloud, at which our mother excelled. Garis’s talky way of telling put him right there at my bedside. “Now, if you’ll get nice and comfortable in your chair, and don’t wiggle too much, I’ll begin. You see, when you wiggle, it gives me the craw-craws, and I can’t think straight…One day, oh, I guess it was just before the Fourth of July, or, maybe, around Decoration Day, Jackie and Peetie…”

Of Garis’s many books, Uncle Wiggily and Jackie and Peetie Bow Wow was my favorite. The Bow Wow boys were always tripping and falling. I was a clumsy 
child (and still have my moments), so those puppies were kindreds.

But it was Garis’s story endings that kindled my taste for the strange and 
marvelous—

If the radio doesn’t talk in its sleep and wake up the alarm clock before it’s time for breakfast, in the next story I’ll tell you about Jackie in a boot.

Now, if I’m not bitten by a grasshopper with pink wings, purple eyes and a gold ring in his nose, riding in a plane, I’m going to tell you next about…

And…if a big, red ant doesn’t crawl upon our porch and carry away the hammock…

I’d lie in bed thinking, “What?…Wait…say that again?” conjuring the bizarre images Garis described. I’d smile at the silliness, then settle under the covers, secure in the knowledge that tomorrow would bring another story — for radios don’t talk when they sleep, I’d never been bitten by a grasshopper, and ants have no use for hammocks.

Now if the honey doesn’t skip tea time and leave Roger Sutton to dance with the crumpet instead…

From the March/April 2013 special issue of The Horn Book Magazine.

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With words like these, how could I have resisted falling under the spell of Lewis Michaux? I am thrilled that his story has been embraced by so many others. The man who said, “If you don’t know and you ain’t got no dough, then you can’t go and that’s for sho’!” would be strutting, proud. I certainly am.

I am honored to find my work in the company of the wonderful creators who have spoken here tonight. I want to thank the members of the Boston Globe–Horn Book committee — Thom Barthelmess, Lauren Adams, and Megan Lambert — for honoring Lewis’s story and helping bring him and his bookstore to readers, young and old. You are forever in my heart. I am grateful, also, to Roger Sutton and The Horn Book Magazine for championing children’s books and reading.

There is a large cast of people, some now passed on, who played parts, large and small, in this project. I owe much to family, longtime and newfound friends, librarians, fellow writers, editors, and those who gave their time and shared their knowledge of, and affection for, Lewis and his National Memorial African Bookstore. Thank you, Greg [Christie], for your inspired drawings. Above all, I thank God for enabling me to fulfill this dream and for sending me my husband, Drew, without whom this book would never have been completed.

I did not experience the kind of troubles my great-uncle Lewis had growing up, but, like Lewis, books were crucial in the making of me.

My love of reading began at bedtime — story time at my home. Our parents read to us every night, and kept on long after we could read on our own. They created a world in which books were valued. We saw them reading, and Dad often recited poetry from memory. They taught me to love words and respect their power.

Knowing what I know now, I have no doubt that my father’s love of literature, particularly poetry, was influenced by Lewis. My mother, too, who worked in the bookstore before marrying my dad, must certainly have caught the fever. I might be standing here today because of Lewis’s influence.

Lewis once said, “Where did I get that literary idea? I could have been an iceman.” If he had been an iceman, I wouldn’t be speaking to you about him now. And I have to wonder, would I have become a writer? I may owe more to him than I know.

I never really knew my great-uncle. My father’s side of the family lived in New York. In the summer, my parents and my brothers and sisters and I would pile into our Chevy station wagon and drive from Pittsburgh to Westchester County for a weeklong visit. We spent most of our time at my paternal grandparents’ home in Port Chester or playing in the sand at Rye Beach. I may have been at the store more than I remember, but I have only one fairly clear memory.

The bookstore was narrow and crowded with books and pamphlets and customers, and I remember the portraits of famous black people lining the walls, looking down on me. Uncle Lewis gave me two books — The Masquerade, An Historical Novel by Oscar Micheaux, and a copy of the King James Bible. I was fourteen. The experience must have meant something to me because these books remain in my collection.

Fast forward to the late 1980s, to the University of Pittsburgh School of Library and Information Science.

“Micheaux? Are you related to that Harlem bookseller?”

Time and again I was asked this by other students and professors. Apparently, big things had occurred at the National Memorial African Bookstore. I wanted to find out what these people knew about my family that I didn’t, and so began my research.

I was simply compiling family history. A book was not in my plans. It wasn’t until the mid-1990s that the notion of a biography became real. By then, I had learned enough about Lewis to realize the bookstore was only his culmination, that the real story lay in his inspiring journey.

It started as straight biography and evolved into something my husband labeled “documentary fiction.”

I lived with this project for fifteen years, putting it on the back burner when I had to. I am a full-time youth services librarian and was writing other books along the way, so I couldn’t actively work on it every day, but the story was always hovering, enticing me back into Lewis’s world, challenging me to finish.

Creating voices for the individuals in No Crystal Stair was some of the most enjoyable composing I’ve ever done. The process allowed me to explore character in a deeper, more intimate way.

I was finding great pleasure in the writing of it but one day asked myself — what is this exactly? Teen biography? No, I had already crossed the line into invention, and invention spells fiction. But was it teen fiction? By page 14, Lewis is an adult. Where was the teenage protagonist? Even if I found an editor who liked it, could it pass muster in an acquisitions meeting? What publisher would buy this book?

I realized it didn’t matter. I needed to continue the project for my family. There was much support coming from that direction — including from Lewis himself. His spirit was there — prodding. He wanted his story told, and I knew in my soul that someone, the Lord or Lewis himself, had chosen me to do it. So I forged ahead and finally reached the end of the first draft in the new format.

In the last chapter, the final voice was Lewis Junior’s. To write his chapters I replayed an interview I had taped with him years earlier. As I listened, it occurred to me there was another story here — a picture book from this child’s point of view. Lewis Jr. had told some wonderful tales about the people he’d met in the store, and about his relationship with his father. A picture book might be more marketable. Perhaps this was the way to introduce Lewis Sr. to young people of today.

So I returned the larger project to the back burner, put my efforts into writing a picture book, and eventually sent it to my amazing agents, Tracey and Josh Adams. Tracey sent it on to my extraordinary editor Andrew Karre at Lerner. It struck a chord. Tracey told me that Andrew said, “I’d love to see a teen biography about this guy.” “Well,” I said, “I have something. It’s not nearly finished and it’s not really a biography any more. But I’m happy to let Andrew read it.” The rest is history.

In 2011, I had lunch with Andrew at ALA in New Orleans and expressed my thanks for the company’s courage in taking on a book that may be destined for the remainder bin. He said, “Vaun, we’re Carolrhoda LAB. It’s what we do — experiment.”

Thank you, Andrew, Adam Lerner, and everyone at Carolrhoda, for your commitment to “boundary-pushing fiction for teens and their sympathizers.” Thank you for your belief in this book. And thank you, Megan, Lauren, and Thom, for validating that belief.

Sometimes you have to do an awful lot of writing to figure out exactly what it is you have to say, to find the story you want to tell and the path that works best for the telling. The late Professor William E. Coles Jr. called this kind of prewriting “throat-clearing.” I owe much to Bill Coles, with whom I had the privilege to teach in the University of Pittsburgh writing program. He brought me to tears numerous times, and I probably learned more about writing from him than from any single individual. I like the term throat-clearing. It’s precise, clarifying.

Sometimes my throat-clearing takes place on the inside, before pen is ever put to paper. More often, I think I have an idea for a story and, with great enthusiasm, set to writing it, only to find, after multiple revisions, that my original thought was not the story at all but only the idea that led to the real story.

It’s like finding your way through a maze. You wish you could have simplified the task by taking the direct route, which you can clearly see now that you are out but, deep inside, you know if you had taken the direct route, you wouldn’t have come out the same…not really.

No Crystal Stair may have taken fifteen years, but it needed those years. I needed those years to become a better writer. I made exciting discoveries along the way which led me in unexpected and rewarding directions, directions I wouldn’t have taken if I’d found my way out of the maze sooner.

Lewis somehow figured out that reading was a good thing for him and it would be a good thing for other striving African Americans. He believed that who we become depends a great deal on our desire to be educated, our efforts to know our history and ourselves, to discover how we might contribute.

Pastor Charles Becknell, who frequented the bookstore, told me, “Alex Haley said that when an older person dies, it’s like a library being burned to the ground…Lewis Michaux took his knowledge with him. But it wasn’t a complete destruction. He transferred some of it to people who came into his bookstore. He left tentacles that reached a lot of people like me. So his spirit is still here. That didn’t go away with him. It’s what we all need to do, leave something that spreads to other people.”

In his final days, Uncle Lewis said to my brother: “You’re building upon a strong family, a strong history that will be lost unless somebody picks it up. There has to be somebody who’s part of it in spirit to keep climbing, to make it a reality.”

I hope, through No Crystal Stair, I’m doing my part.

This speech was originally delivered on September 28, 2012, at the Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards Ceremony at Simmons College. Click here for illustrator R. Gregory Christie’s acceptance speech for No Crystal Stair.

The post No Crystal Stair: Author Vaunda Micheaux Nelson’s 2012 BGHB Fiction Award Speech appeared first on The Horn Book.

Sixteen years ago, the pioneer spirit overtook my husband, Drew, and me. We packed our wagon (a U-Haul) and, with our cat riding shotgun, left Pittsburgh and set out for the Santa Fe Trail and Albuquerque, New Mexico. You know, the place where Bugs Bunny should have turned left? It’s been a grand adventure. We are still in awe of the big sky, the high desert landscape, and the fascinating history of the West. Writer that I am, it’s not surprising that I have found much wisdom and wit in the idiom of Western icons — that black-and-white, get-to-the-point, simple way of talking, from a time when folks helped each other and a handshake was enough.

As I give thanks for this award, I’d like to share some cowboy wisdom with you.

When you get to where you’re goin’, the first thing to do is take care of the horse you rode in on. I’m going to reverse the usual order of things and express my gratitude up front because I sure rode in on a whole herd of horses.

First, I thank my Lord for helping me through this past year and giving me hope for the future. I lost my brother to cancer and my mom to Alzheimer’s in 2009. Amid all the sadness, Bad News for Outlaws: The Remarkable Life of Bass Reeves, Deputy U.S. Marshal was released and received terrific reviews. Bad News kept me from digging myself into a hole. A cowboy saying goes — You can just about always stand more’n you think you can. Still, when the year ended, I told my husband, “I just want 2010 to be a straight line.” Well, that didn’t happen! The 2010 Coretta Scott King Book Awards jury saw to that. I am now happily taking back my wish for a straight line.

It was Martin Luther King Day at ALA Midwinter in Boston when I got the news. I was entering a program honoring Dr. King and reaching to turn off my phone when it rang. The caller said, “This is Carole McCollough.” Being a youth services librarian, I knew Carole was chair of the CSK jury; that it was Youth Media Awards day; and that winners are phoned right before the press conference. The moment she said her name, all these details connected. My heart started pounding, and I got choked up even before I heard why she called. I would have been pretty embarrassed if she’d said, “Let’s do lunch.” I’d love to have lunch with Carole, but I’m glad that isn’t what she said.

Having served on ALA awards committees, I know how difficult it is to select one from so many worthy titles. I know the odds. To start the new year with this firm nod of approval from my library colleagues, this amazing gesture that says, “You’re doing great, Vaun!” is a blessing. Thank you, dear, marvelous members of my CSK jury — Carole McCollough, Eunice Anderson, Alan R. Bailey, Brenda Hunter, Jonda C. McNair, Martha Ruff, Robin Smith. Thank you for appreciating the work and for helping to bring Bass’s story to readers. You have filled my heart with so much happiness. I will love you all my life.

I’m much obliged to my husband, Drew — my best editor, best critic, best friend; my protector and biggest fan. Drew believes in me more than I do. Although Bad News is finished, I’m not done with the West, being married to a man who is a cowboy at heart. At the end of my story, there’s nothing I want more than to ride off into the sunset . . . with him.

I love and fear words — their potential to uplift or tear down. My father taught me to respect that potential. Dad, a man of few words, wrote poetry and sketched. My mother made me love stories. She’d sit at the top of the stairs every night and create magic with a book. It was reader’s theater. If Mommy couldn’t be there, she assigned the reading to whomever she’d deputized to watch us that night. But no one could do it like her. So much of the writer in me is my parents’ doing. I got really lucky with them.

My siblings, Renee, Regina (who taught me to read), Billie, and Eddie teased me, bossed me, taught me, fought me, protected and loved me. I thank them for all of it, and for providing me with a deep well from which to draw my stories. I thank them and my huge extended family for being the net beneath my tightrope.

Thanks to Tracey and Josh of Adams Literary for allowing me to focus on the writing while they take such good care of the business.

A heap of thanks to Art T. Burton for his invaluable assistance. The true Bass Reeves expert, he generously shared his knowledge and passion. His commitment to Bass’s story is unmatched.

Thanks to my editors, Shannon Barefield and Mary Rodgers, for their patient understanding of my maternal concern over every word. And to Adam Lerner and everyone at Carolrhoda and Lerner — Danielle, Zach, Lois, Lindsay, Kathleen, Brad, Elizabeth, Terri, Julie, David, and Andrew, for their kindness to me and their respect for Bass.

Thanks to the masterful R. Gregory Christie for bringing Bass’s story to life through his amazing paintings. I think Bass would be proud of how Greg portrayed him.

I’m grateful to my writing group — Stephanie Farrow, Lucy Hampson, Katherine Hauth, Uma Krishnaswami, Jean Whitehouse Peterson — for never complaining when, for the umpteenth time, I brought yet another revision of the manuscript for just one more read. This award is partly theirs.

Special thanks to my pard Lori Snyder for her friendship. And to everyone back home at Rio Rancho Public Library. Thanks to all my friends in Pittsburgh and elsewhere, especially Christyl and Justin Brown, for their encouragement and caring.

Thank you, friends and colleagues in the library, writing, and publishing communities, for cheering me on over the years. I can hardly believe I’m standing up here. I’m used to being out there with you, looking in this direction. Thanks to my posse from the 2002 Newbery committee, the committee that refuses to let go. Most were seated with me when the announcement came and, in wild fashion, swarmed me in a mass embrace. It was a moment I will never forget.

Thanks to G. P. Putnam’s Sons for taking a chance on a brand-new author back in 1986, and to Random House for helping to keep that writer moving forward.

And many thanks to Deb Taylor and the CSK committee for their labor of love promoting books for youth by African Americans, and for allowing me to be part of this good work.

My love affair with Bass Reeves began in 2003. Drew wasn’t jealous. He, in fact, introduced us. Drew had already won my heart and knew, like it or not, he’d be stuck with me to the end of the trail. Besides, Bass had been dead since 1910, so Drew had no fears of finding us together except through the written word.

My research for Bad News began in 2003, but the project didn’t become real until 2005. My then editor, Shannon Barefield, told me Lerner was hoping to publish more picture book biographies and wondered if there was anyone I might be interested in doing. I immediately thought of Bass, but just said, “Maybe.”

I wasn’t sure of my ability to tell Bass’s remarkable story for a picture book audience. Could I do it justice with such limited text? There was so much captivating and complex stuff to consider . . . the keeping of slaves by Indians, the emergence of black towns, the culture of Indian Territory, not to mention the violent times in which Bass lived and the guns and killing that I couldn’t avoid. Though he took no pleasure in using deadly force, this was part of Bass’s job as a peace officer. I recalled my own childhood and how we loved the Old West, the shootouts, the horses, the grubby life of cowboys. And I realized I was falling victim to adult worries about children and violence. I decided if I told Bass’s story well, kids could handle the violence, and they’d eat him up as we did our Western heroes. I do want adults to love my work (and I’m thrilled the CSK jury did), but I write for kids and, selfishly, myself.

Here’s another bit of cowboy wisdom:

You don’t need decorated words to make your meanin’ clear. Say it plain and save some breath for breathin’. Working with Western language was a delightful challenge. I liked the touch of humor and flavor of the times this language added to the telling. My challenge was using it gently, finding a balance. I didn’t want to diminish the serious nature of Bass’s accomplishments.

There is much to admire about Bass — his strength, fearlessness, and skill with weapons, his clever use of disguises, phenomenal memory, and sense of duty and honor. Some believe he was the inspiration for the Lone Ranger. When we pretended to be cowboys, my siblings and I argued over who got to play Hopalong Cassidy, the Lone Ranger, Wyatt Earp, Roy Rogers, and other favorites, most of whom were fictional. I don’t recall spending a lot of time thinking about race during my childhood, but I wonder how I might have felt if among our heroes stood Bass Reeves — a black man who was not a minor character or a bad guy. A black man who was a hero — a real hero.

Old West lawmen like Wyatt Earp and Wild Bill Hickok were peace officers for less than a decade. They couldn’t hold a candle to Bass, who worked as a deputy U.S. marshal for thirty-two years in what was arguably the most dangerous area of the country. Imagine, a slave who rose to become the most feared and respected lawman of his time! Bass deserved so much better than he got. I am proud that Bad News is playing a small part in giving him his due.

Well, I can’t be jawin’ all morning. My moment is about over. I reckon it’s gettin’ time for me to mosey. So let me end with more cowboy wisdom, which comes from a fine book by Texas Bix Bender called Don’t Squat with Yer Spurs On!: A Cowboy’s Guide to Life, published by Gibbs M. Smith.

Here goes:

Makin’ it in life is kinda like
bustin’ broncos: you’re gonna get
thrown a lot.The simple secret
is to keep gettin’ back on.

Think the best of people, but it don’t
hurt to count your change.

Lettin’ the cat outta the bag is a
whole lot easier’n puttin’ it back.

Don’t worry about bitin’ off
more than you can chew.

Your mouth is probably a whole
lot bigger’n you think.

The quickest way to double your
money is to fold it over and put it
back in your pocket.

Don’t never interfere with something
that ain’t botherin’ you none.

Comin’ as close to the
truth as a man can come without
gettin’ there is comin’ pretty close,
but it still ain’t the truth.

Don’t let so much reality
into your life that there’s no
room left for dreamin’.

There’s one more, but before I share it, I again want to express my thanks to everyone who played a part in my being here today. I’m beholden to you all. And we all owe a debt of gratitude to Deputy U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves for his service to our country. He was, indeed, someone to ride the river with.

Okay, here’s the final piece of cowboy wisdom:

Never miss a good
chance to shut up.

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