In the footsteps of giants

I'm going to New York next week to help select the new National Ambassador for Young People's Literature and I'm taking names. Here are the criteria:

Author or illustrator of fiction or nonfiction books
U.S. citizen, living in the U.S.
Excellent and facile communicator
Dynamic and engaging personality
Known ability to relate to children; communicates well and regularly with them
Someone who has made a substantial contribution to young people’s literature
Stature; someone who is revered by children and who has earned the respect and admiration of his or her peers

Most important, he or she will have to follow in the big clown-shoe footsteps of Jon Scieszka. Who do we like? Leave your suggestions in the comments.

[Update: Thank you for all the suggestions and discussion. An announcement of the new Ambassador will be forthcoming later in the year. Your comments were very helpful as the committee deliberated.]

The Many Mysteries of Children's Choices

Huh? seems to be the main question directed at the Children's Book Council's just-announced Children's Choice Book Awards, an Internet election for "Favorite Books," "Favorite Author," and "Favorite Illustrator." The five nominees, "compiled from a review of bestseller lists, including those prepared by BookScan, The New York Times and USA Today," for each of the latter two categories include the expected names (Rowling, Horowitz, Willems, Brett, etc.). But the "favorite books," with five nominees for each of three age categories are more surprising in that they include no books from any of the favorite authors or illustrators, nor, as Betsy Bird points out, any novels at all among the nominees for the Grades 5-6 category. Maybe the Horn Book really is an ivory tower, but I confess no more than a passing acquaintance with a dozen of the fifteen nominated titles, all 2007 books.

According to the CBC, these fifteen "finalists were determined by the IRA-CBC Children's Choices Program." Watch out for the passive voice, it bites you in the ass almost every time. The Children's Choices program has been around since 1975, enrolling children in schools around the country in a system of book discussion of several hundred books (nominated by their publishers) that results in a list of 100 titles each year. As far as I know, this list has no "top fifteen," so we don't know how these "finalists" were chosen. I suppose it could be that these books are the ones the Children's Choice children did like best, but their relative obscurity prompted the CBC to supplement those choices with ballots for the authors and illustrators who were unaccountably ignored. Ya got me.