There was a long newspaper strike the first winter we moved into metropolitan New York. Saturday used to be my day off, and I used that day for taking art lessons in the morning and for exploring Manhattan in the afternoon. Our suburbs were New Jersey suburbs then, and my last piece of walking involved a cross-town journey toward the Port Authority Bus Terminal. On one of those Saturdays, as I was in the heart of the theater district, a volley of teen-age girls came larruping down the street bellowing, “The Rolling Stones! The Rolling Stones!” Up ahead, a small bunch of long-haired boys broke into a run and ducked into an alley, Shubert Alley. The girls pursued, and the Rolling Stones gathered; they pushed their collective hair out of their collective eyes and signed autographs.

I told my family about this small happening when I came home, but that was not enough. The next day I wanted to show them an account of it in the paper. But there was no Sunday paper then. It didn’t get written down. I had seen it happen, and still I missed its not being written down. Even now, I miss its never having been written down. I need to see the words to make more real that which I have experienced. And that is the first way I need words. A quotation from my old world of science explains it: ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. Each animal in its individual development passes through stages in which it resembles its remote ancestors. I spread words on paper for the same reasons that Cro-Magnon man spread pictures on the walls of caves. I need to see it put down: the Rolling Stones and the squealing girls. Thus, first of all, writing it down adds another dimension to reality and satisfies an atavistic need.

And I need words for a second reason. I need them for the reasons that Jane Austen probably did. She told about the dailiness of living. She presented a picture that only someone both involved with his times and detached from them could present. Just like me. I am involved in the everyday, corn-flakes, worn-out-sneakers way of life of my children; yet I am detached from it by several decades. And I give words to the supermarket shopping and to the laundromat just as Jane Austen gave words to afternoon visiting and worry about drafts from open windows.

Just as she stood in a corridor, sheltered by roof and walls from the larger world of her century, just as she stood there and described what was happening in the cubicles of civilization, I stand in my corridor. My corridor is my generation, a hallway away from the children that I breed and need and write about. I peek into homes sitting on quarter-acre lots and into apartments with two bedrooms and two baths. So I need words for this reason: to make record of a place, suburban America, and a time, early autumn of the twentieth century.

My phylogenetic need, adding another dimension to reality, and my class and order need, making record, are certainly the wind at my back, but a family need is the directed, strong gust that pushes me to my desk. And here I don’t mean family in the taxonomic sense. I mean family that I lived in when I was growing up and family that I live in now.

Read Mary Poppins, and you get a good glimpse of upper-middle-class family life in England a quarter of a century ago, a family that had basis in fact. Besides Mary there were Cook and Robertson Ay, and Ellen to lay the table. The outside of the Banks’ house needed paint. Would such a household exist in a middle-class neighborhood in a Shaker Heights, Ohio, or a Paramus, New Jersey? Hardly. There would be no cook; mother would be subscribing to Gourmet magazine. Robertson Ay’s salary would easily buy the paint, and Mr. Banks would be cleaning the leaves out of his gutters on a Sunday afternoon. No one in the Scarsdales of this country allows the house to get run down. It is not in the order of things to purchase services instead of paint.

Read The Secret Garden, and you find another world that I know about only in words. Here is a family living on a large estate staffed by servants who are devoted to the two generations living there. Here is a father who has no visible source of income. He neither reaps nor sows; he doesn’t even commute. He apparently never heard of permissiveness in raising children. He travels around Europe in search of himself, and no one resents his leaving his family to do it. Families of this kind had a basis in fact, but fact remote from me.

I have such faith in words that when I read about such families as a child, I thought that they were the norm and that the way I lived was subnormal, waiting for normal.

Where were the stories then about growing up in a small mill town where there was no one named Jones in your class? Where were the stories that made having a class full of Radasevitches and Gabellas and Zaharious normal? There were stories about the crowd meeting at the corner drugstore after school. Where were the stories that told about the store owner closing his place from 3:1 5 until 4:00 P.M. because he found that what he gained in sales of Coca-Cola he lost in stolen Hershey Bars? How come that druggist never seemed normal to me? He was supposed to be grumpy but lovable; the stories of my time all said so.

Where are the stories now about fathers who come home from work grouchy? Not mean. Not mad. Just nicely, mildly grouchy. Where are the words that tell about mothers who are just slightly hungover on the morning after New Year’s Eve? Not drunkard mothers. Just headachey ones. Where are the stories that tell about the pushy ladies? Not real social climbers. Just moderately pushy. Where are all the parents who are experts on schools? They are all around me in the suburbs of New Jersey and New York, in Pennsylvania and Florida, too. Where are they in books? Some of them are in my books.

And I put them there for my kids. To excuse myself to my kids. Because I have this foolish faith in words. Because I want to show it happening. Because for some atavistic, artistic, inexplicable reason, I believe that the writing of it makes normal of it.

Some of the words come from another family part of me. From being a mother. From the part of me that urges, “Say something else, too. Describe, sure, describe what life is like in these suburbs. Tell how it is normal to be very comfortable on the outside but very uncomfortable on the inside. Tell how funny it all is. But tell a little something else, too. What can it hurt? Tell a little something else — about how you can be a nonconformist and about how you can be an outsider. And tell how you are entitled to a little privacy. But for goodness’ sake, say all that very softly. Let the telling be like fudge-ripple ice cream. You keep licking vanilla, but every now and then you come to something darker and deeper and with a stronger flavor. Let the something-else words be the chocolate.”

The illustrations probably come from the kindergartener who lives inside, somewhere inside me, who says, “Silly, don’t you know that it is called show and tell? Hold up and show and then tell.” I have to show how Mrs. Frankweiler looks and how Jennifer looks. Besides, I like to draw, and I like to complete things, and doing the illustrations answers these simple needs.

And that is my metamorphosis; I guess it was really that and not a conversion at all. The egg that gives form to the caterpillar and then to the chrysalis was really meant to be a butterfly in the first place. Chemistry was my larval stage, and those nine years at home doing diaper service were my cocoon. And you see standing before you today the moth I was always meant to be. (Well, I hardly qualify as a butterfly.) A moth who lives on words. On January 13, after I had finished doing my Zorba Dance and after I had cried over the phone to Mae Durham and to Jean Karl, after I had said all the I can’t believe it’s and all the Oh, no, not really’s, I turned to my husband and asked a typical-wife question, “Did you ever think fifteen years ago when you married a li’l ole organic chemist from Farrell, Pennsylvania, that you were marrying a future Newbery winner and runner-up?” And my husband answered in typical-David fashion, “No, but I knew it would be a nice day when it happened.” And it was a nice day. It’s been a whole row of wonderful days since it happened. Thank you, Jean Karl, for helping to give Jennifer and Elizabeth and Claudia and Jamie that all important extra dimension, print on paper. Thank you, Mae Durham and all the members of the committee, for deciding that my words were special. And thank you, Mr. Melcher, for the medal that stamps them special. All of you, thank you, for giving me something that allows me to go home like Claudia — different on the inside where it counts.

Given at the meeting of the American Library Association in Kansas City, Missouri, on June 25, 1968. The Newbery Medal “for the most distinguished contribution to American Literature for children” was awarded to Mrs. Konigsburg for From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (Atheneum). From the August 1968 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.

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*Paper read at the meeting of the American Library Association, Minneapolis, Minnesota, June 22, 1954.

My deep gratitude to the members of the American Library Association for the Caldecott Medal.

Now we shall talk about art.

There is one life that is more difficult than that of the policeman’s and that is the life of the artist.

I have repeatedly said two things that no one takes seriously, and they are that first of all I am not a writer but a painter, and secondly that I have no imagination. It is very curious that, with my lack of these important essentials, the character of Madeline came to be. It accounts perhaps for her strength; she insisted on being born. Before she came into the world, I painted. That is, I placed canvas or paper on an easel before me and made pictures. I found in this complete happiness and satisfaction.

The unfortunate thing about painting is that the artist must exhibit, and at exhibitions, along with his work, exhibit himself; that he has to see his work, which is as his children, sold; see it wrapped up and taken away. I felt sorry for many of my pictures and those of other painters. I wish that there were a way of acquiring dogs or paintings other than by walking into a store and paying for them. The art market, then, the faces of the people who come and look at pictures, the methods of arriving at success, which entail self-advertisement and the kissing of hands, were not my dish.

I looked for another way of painting, for privacy; for a fresh audience, vast and critical and remote, to whom I could address myself with complete freedom. I wanted to do what seemed self-evident — to avoid sweet pictures, the eternal still lifes, the pretty portraits that sell well, arty abstractions, pastoral fireplace pictures, calendar art, and surrealist nightmares.

I wanted to paint purely that which gave me pleasure, scenes that interested me; and one day I found that the audience for that kind of painting was a vast reservoir of impressionists who did very good work themselves, who were very clear-eyed and capable of enthusiasm. I addressed myself to children.

You will notice in Madeline that there is very little text and there is a lot of picture. The text allows me the most varied type of illustration: there is the use of flowers, of the night, of all of Paris, and such varied detail as the cemetery of Père la Chaise and the restaurant of the Deux Magots. All this was there waiting to be used, but as yet Madeline herself hovered about as an unborn spirit.

Her beginnings can be traced to stories my mother told me of her life as a little girl in the convent of Altoetting in Bavaria. I visited this convent with her and saw the little beds in straight rows, and the long table with the washbasins at which the girls had brushed their teeth. I myself, as a small boy, had been sent to a boarding school in Rothenburg. We walked through that ancient town in two straight lines. I was the smallest one, but our arrangement was reversed. I walked ahead in the first row, not on the hand of Mademoiselle Clavel at the end of the column.

All this, as I said, for many years hung in the air and was at the back of my mind. Madeline finally began to take shape in France, where I had gone to paint. My daughter Barbara was about Madeline’s age when we went to the Isle d’Yeu for a summer vacation. This was then an island without any pretensions, and has since become famous as the place of detainment of Marshal Pétain. There was the usual Hôtel des Voyageurs and the Café de la Marine. The house we rented was twenty-five dollars for the season. It had its own private beach and the beds were always full of sand. A few miles away lived a man who owned a few lobsterpots and a fishing boat, and I bicycled there regularly to buy the makings of a bouillabaisse or a fish stew.

One day, pedaling along the road home with the sack of seafood over my shoulder, both hands in my pockets, and tracing fancy curves in the roadbed, I came to a bend which was hidden by some pine trees. Around this turn, coming the other way, raced the island’s only automobile — a four horsepower Super Rosengart belonging to the baker of Saint Sauveur, the capital village on the island. This car was a fragrant, flour-covered breadbasket on wheels. I collided with it, and it threw me in a wide curve off the bicycle into a bramble bush. I had taken the car’s doorhandle off with my arm and I was bleeding. I asked the baker to take me to the hospital in Saint Sauveur, but he said that according to French law, a car that has been involved in an accident has to remain exactly where it was when the crash occurred so that the gendarmes can make their proper deductions and see who was on the wrong side of the road. I tried to change his mind, but he said: “Permit me alors, Monsieur; if you use language like that it is no use at all to go on with this conversation.”

Having spoken, he went to pick up his pain de ménage and some croissants that were scattered on the road, and then he spread the branches of the thicket to look for the handle of his Super Rosengart. I took my lobsters and went to the hospital on foot.

After I had waited for a time, an old doctor came, with a cigarette stub sticking to his lower lip. He examined my wound, cleaned it, and then with a blunt needle he wobbled into my arm. “Excusez moi,” he said, “but your skin is very, very tough.” I was put into a small, white, carbolicky bed, and it took a while for my arm to heal. Here were the stout sister that you see bringing the tray to Madeline, and the crank on the bed. In the room across the hall was a little girl who had had an appendix operation, and, standing up in bed, with great pride she showed her scar to me. Over my bed was the crack in the ceiling “That had the habit, of sometimes looking like a rabbit.” It all began to arrange itself. And after I got back to Paris I started to paint the scenery for the book. I looked up telephone numbers to rhyme with appendix. One day I had a meeting with Léon Blum, and if you take a look at the book, you will see that the doctor who runs to Madeline’s bed is the great patriot and humanitarian Léon Blum.

And so Madeline was born, or rather appeared by her own decision.

Now we come to the sequel, which is the bearer of this medal and the reason why I am here tonight…

In this story Madeline shares the pages with a dog. This dog came about in a strange way. My wife’s parents live in Larchmont, and in a house next door to them is a family of outwardly respectable folk — that is, no one in that solid community would suspect that this quiet and respectable suburban house was occupied by a poet. Her name is Phyllis McGinley and she writes for The New Yorker.

She has two little girls, and they said, “Why don’t you write another Madeline?” So I offered them fifty cents apiece if they would give me an Idea, for I was paralyzed with lack of imagination. The children did not even go out of the room. They came with hands held out, and after I paid them they stated the plot:

“There’s a dog, see — Madeline has a dog. And then the dog is taken away but it comes back again, maybe with puppies so all the girls can have dogs.”

That was tight and clever dramatic construction, and now there remained the dog to find. I said, “What kind of a dog?”

“Oh, any kind of a dog.”

I went back to Paris and started to look for any kind of a dog. And of that breed Genevieve is a member.

I had a studio at the time in a house on the Seine at number one Git de Coeur, and I walked down to the quay and promenaded along there. Under one of the bridges there lived an old man with his dog. He loved it very much and he combed its fur with the same comb he did his own hair, and they sat together watching the fishermen and the passing boats. I started to draw that dog, and observed it. It loved to swim.

I now had the dog and I sat along the Seine, and thought about the new book. But as yet there wasn’t a plot I could use, and the little girls who might have done it for me were in America.

Then one day something happened. An object was floating down the Seine, and little boys ran along the quay, and as the object came near it turned out to be an artificial leg. One of the little boys pointed at it and said, “Ah, la jambe de mon Grandpère!”

At that same moment a long line of little girls passed over the bridge des Arts, followed by their teacher. They stopped and looked, holding onto the iron rails with their white-gloved hands. The leg was now very close, and the dog jumped into the Seine and retrieved it, struggling ashore and pulling it from the water by backing up the stones.

There suddenly was a great vision before me. The plot was perfect.

There are many problems ahead. Who are Madeline’s parents? Who are the other girls, what are their names, what new disaster shall Mademoiselle Clavel rush to? The next Madeline on which I have been working for two years concerns a boy called Pepito, the son of the Spanish Ambassador who lives next door to the little girls and is a very bad hat.

I’m looking for him now. That is, I’ve been to Spain three times and searched for him and for his house. As yet, nothing has come up, but with patience it always does, for somewhere he is, lives and breathes. The portrait of life is the most important work of the artist and it is good only when you’ve seen it, when you’ve touched it, when you know it. Then you can breathe life onto canvas and paper.

This article, originally published in the August 1954 issue of The Horn Book Magazine, is part of our Caldecott at 75 celebration. Click here for more archival Horn Book material on Ludwig Bemelmans and Madeline’s Rescue.

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The White Bicycle (published in November 2012 by Canada’s Red Deer Press) is the final book in Beverley Brenna’s trilogy centered on Taylor Simon, a teenager from Saskatchewan with Asperger’s syndrome. Here she’s nineteen and in the south of France, babysitting for a boy with cerebral palsy, forming some unlikely friendships, coping with her controlling mother, and working toward independence. Taylor — her voice, her personality — has a lot in common with Christopher in Mark Haddon’s Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time and Ted in Siobhan Dowd’s London Eye Mystery: distinctive, honest, unemotional yet deeply moving, and even (inadvertently) funny.

But note that Taylor is a female character with Asperger’s — and that alone would probably be enough to take note of this book. There aren’t that many. And yet this book is much less about living with Asperger’s and much more about living, period. It’s a coming-of-age novel, not an Asperger’s novel; it’s a novel about Taylor, not a novel about a girl with Asperger’s. (I trust I’ve hammered home that point thoroughly enough.)

Take nineteen-year-old Taylor’s friendship with ninety-five-year-old Adelaide. Taylor has Asperger’s; Adelaide has dementia. Yet their friendship is true, rewarding for them both, and, for the reader, poignant to the max. And on the admiring-the-writing side, the scenes between the two of them are as carefully and intricately choreographed as a dance.

Take Taylor’s insights into life. I’d call it wisdom, but that makes the novel seem too weighty. “I decide not to think about my trip to Cassis just now. Sometimes, it’s better to not think about things all of the time when you can think about them only some of the time and be calmer.” “It is common for very old people to die. Her daughter said that it was to be expected. But I did not expect it.”

Brenna’s ability to let readers see the world through Taylor’s eyes is extraordinary.

And Taylor herself is an extraordinary character.  I hope readers find this book. Meanwhile, I’ll be looking to read the first two books in the Wild Orchid trilogy. Thanks again, Printz committee.

Read the Horn Book’s reviews of this year’s other Printz picks here.

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INGRI AND EDGAR PARIN D’AULAIRE, Author-Illustrators
Abraham Lincoln (Doubleday)

“Deep in the wilderness down in Kentucky there stood a cabin of roughly hewn logs. It was a poor little cabin of only one room. But the flames flickered gaily on the hearth….In this cabin lived a man named Thomas Lincoln with his wife and his little daughter, Sally. And here it was that his son, Abraham Lincoln, first saw the world on a Sunday morning (in February). It wasn’t much of a house in which he was born, but it was just as good as most people had in Kentucky in 1809.” A young assistant in the children’s room of a large city branch said when she had finished looking at it, “How the refugee children will love this book!” The d’Aulaires have told the story of Lincoln well and their pictures are bound to interest children and to be interesting and arresting to grown-ups.

reviewed in the May 1939 issue of The Horn Book Magazine

1941

ROBERT LAWSON, Author-Illustrator
They Were Strong and Good (Viking)

A country made up as is ours of many different racial strains may well take pains to see that its children are conscious of their heritage. Robert Lawson has made an unusual contribution to such an objective in this boylike record of his own ancestors. His fine line drawings accompanied by short, straightforward text give a picture of these forebears who are a pride to him, not because of wealth or position but because of character. “They were strong and good.” The touch is a light one — you can trust Robert Lawson to bring his glinting humor into play — but none the less is the book a bit of social history out of the family album.

reviewed in the November 1940 issue of The Horn Book Magazine

1942

ROBERT MCCLOSKEY, Author-Illustrator
Make Way for Ducklings (Viking)

The Boston Public Garden has never appeared in more attractive guise than in this engaging book. The story of the family of ducks, raised on the Charles River and brought back to the pond in the Garden, through the traffic of city streets by its anxious mother is founded on fact as many Bostonians can testify. Robert McCloskey’s unusual and stunning pictures will long be a delight for their fun as well as their spirit of place.

reviewed in the November 1941 issue of The Horn Book Magazine

1943

VIRGINIA LEE BURTON, Author-Illustrator
The Little House (Houghton)

In the most fascinating picture book of the season, Virginia Lee Burton tells the story of a Little house which wins its way into the very center of our heart. Stunning pictures in color show the changing scene of summer and winter, as the house watches the sun rise and set, and lights begin to twinkle in the nearby city, until she felt the city grow up around her, step by step. Both city and country children will study these pictures with absorption, for there is much exciting detail in them. Besides the seasonal sports and activities of children who played around the house, there is the panorama of the passers-by, in horse-drawn vehicles at first, and then in every kind of motor car you can think of. The pictures are full of life and movement, of work even more than play. And in the end we have the joy of seeing the little house, now shabby and forlorn, move back into the green and sunny country, where the stars shine over her at night. This is the best of Virginia Lee Burton’s books, so far, and we predict for it a long and favored life.

reviewed in the November 1942 issue of The Horn Book Magazine

1944

JAMES THURBER
Many Moons (Harcourt)

Illustrated by Louis Siobodkin. A charming picture book about an imperious ten-year-old princess who wanted the moon, and what her father did to get it for her. The Lord High Chamberlain, the Royal Wizard, the Royal Mathematician were all called upon in vain, and at last it was the Royal Jester who helped the princess find her own answer to the troublesome demand. Louis Slobodkin’s many lovely pictures have an important share in making a distinguished book of this amusing fairy tale — the first book James Thurber has written for children.

reviewed in the September 1943 issue of The Horn Book Magazine

1945

RACHEL FIELD
Prayer for a Child (Macmillan)

Pictures by Elizabeth Orton Jones. This childlike prayer, written for Hannah, has been printed before, but not in illustrated form, as a book by itself. A realistic, unsentimental picture on each page makes the meaning of the phrases more clear to little children, closer to daily life. This is a choice book for a reverent mother to use at home with a young family.

reviewed in the January 1945 issue of The Horn Book Magazine

1946

MAUD AND MISKA PETERSHAM, Author-Illustrators
The Rooster Crows (Macmillan)

“A Book of American Rhymes and Jingles.” Counting-out and rope-skipping rhymes bring up visions of generations of American children, in the playground and the street; familiar finger-plays and folk-jingles recall the nursery and the home. “Mother may I go out to swim?” and “Star Light, Star Bright,” come back to the memory as easily as “Yankee Doodle.” The Petershams have made delightful pictures, in soft harmonious colors, with plenty of humor for these and many other rhymes that American children chant freely. They have made a beautiful book and the publishers have given it clear large type for young readers.

reviewed in the March 1946 issue of The Horn Book Magazine

1947

GOLDEN MACDONALD
The Little Island (Doubleday)

Illustrated by Leonard Weisgard. In some of his most brilliant and exciting pictures Leonard Weisgard shows the changes that the seasons bring to a little island out in the ocean. The rhythmic story tells of the kitten who came ashore from a sailboat and found out the secret of being an island from a wise and talkative fish. A picture book of great charm.

reviewed in the January 1947 issue of The Horn Book Magazine

1948

ALVIN TRESSELT
White Snow Bright Snow (Lothrop)

Illustrated by Roger Duvoisin. Lovely full-page pictures in color convey the joyous feeling of beauty and wonder and frolic that comes to little children when snowflakes are in the air. The text describes some of the work snow brings to grown-ups.

reviewed in the November 1947 issue of The Horn Book Magazine

1949

BERTA AND ELMER HADER, Author-Illustrators
The Big Snow (Macmillan)

Lovely pictures in color and in black and white show the different animals of the woods getting ready for winter after they see the wild geese flying south. Here are the cottontails eating plenty of food, the chipmunks busy with their store of nuts; bluejays and cardinals, robins and pheasants, all preparing to stay with the mice and the deer, thinking they are ready for the winter. Then  come the snow in all its whiteness and heavy abundance, the need of the wild creatures and the feeding of the birds by two kindly folk in the country.

reviewed in the November 1948 issue of The Horn Book Magazine

These reviews of 1940s Caldecott Medal–winning titles are part of our Caldecott at 75 celebration. Click here for more archival Horn Book material on Elizabeth Orton Jones and Prayer for a Child.

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Every year we aim to put our response to the award announcements on the website by mid-afternoon, so the late start puts a bit more pressure on us. When the press conference finishes, designated people swing into action figuring out where we reviewed each book (or even IF we reviewed a book), grabbing and formatting the review text, tracking down book cover images, formatting the pages, and checking titles and author names before uploading. The bulk of this work is done by Katie, but the rest of us pitch in as we can.

At the same time, we’re also trying to get the winter Nonfiction Notes from the Horn Book, March/April Horn Book Magazine, and Spring Horn Book Guide out on time. The Horn Book has a staff of nine, but Roger and Martha are in Seattle, Kitty works at home on Mondays, Elissa is on maternity leave, Shara is still out recovering from a car accident… You get the idea.

Despite the skeleton crew, there’s always an atmosphere of excitement on Youth Media Awards morning. Each of us has personal favorites we’re rooting for and we know which books the others are hoping to see honored. After all, we’ve been discussing these titles all year, whether formally in star meetings or informally while waiting to use the microwave at lunchtime.

Just before the press conference begins, Katie (front on laptop) prepares to grab text from the Twitter feed, Jen (filling in for Elissa) reads a text from Martha in Seattle, and Cindy sets up the webcast.

While Katie, Jen, and Cindy gathered together in the magazine area, I was listening in from my own workstation, attempting to get caught up on the March Magazine after being out sick for the past week. Of course, as soon as the announcements began I got sucked into the drama. I could hear the crowd reaction in Seattle as well as the editors outside my door. And even though I told myself I didn’t need to pay close attention until the Caldecott announcement at the end, I also had my own favorites in each of the earlier categories.

Elsewhere in the office, Katrina and Meredith (filling in for Shara) work on the Spring 2013 Horn Book Guide.

As the award announcements near the end, Katie is preparing pages for our website including reviews of the winning books while Cindy writes up the award announcements for the March Horn Book’s Impromptu section.

Robin flew home this afternoon and once she’s recovered from her very busy weekend, she’ll post something about experiencing the awards announcements in person.

And what about all of you? How did you handle the excitement of the announcements?

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  Honor: Electric Ben: The Amazing Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin by Robert Byrd; illus. by the author (Dial)
With a jacket showing Benjamin Franklin as a cross between a mad scientist and a superhero standing amid wild lightning bolts and surrounded by all manner of electrical devices, this book shimmers with excitement, begging to be read. Byrd divides Franklin’s life into seventeen often whimsically labeled double-page spreads, beginning with his childhood and ending with his death. Two such spreads (“Coaxing Sparks from the Sky” and “The Wonderful Effects of Points”) deal with his fascination with electricity, with the remainder covering topics ranging from his ideas for social progress (such as a lending library and fire department) to his diplomatic roles before, during, and after the American Revolution. An informative, exploratory, nonpandering text (“Franklin’s expertise lay in making the most of the printed page, delighting those who agreed with him, and disarming those who did not; always keeping all parties anticipating his next move”) is set amid an attractive page layout. Nicely developed and designed spot art and larger illustrations on every page serve as internal end notes, explaining tangential information, giving more detail to certain ideas, and providing a visual record of Ben’s life and times. An author’s note, timeline, bibliography, and recommended readings complete the book. BETTY CARTER

Honor: Moonbird: A Year on the Wind with the Great Survivor B95 written by Phillip M. Hoose (Farrar)
He’s called “Moonbird” because, over a lifespan of twenty years, he’s flown some 325,000 miles, the distance to the moon and almost halfway back. This robin-sized red knot (subspecies rufa), a shorebird, is in southern Argentina from October to February and in the Arctic, breeding, for a few summer weeks; between times, his great migrating flock is like a “constantly shifting organism — now a ball, now a rippling blanket” as the birds fly nearly from pole to pole twice a year. Stops are few but strategic; after thousands of miles it’s essential to bulk up with what’s available at the same few sites each year: mosquito larvae, mussels, horseshoe crab eggs. Thanks to banding and photography by scientists, who call him B95, sightings are documented since 1995 (when adult plumage indicated B95’s age to be at least three years). Even for his species, B95 is extraordinary — “one of the world’s premier athletes” — but Hoose’s fascinating account concerns much more than this one bird. In lucid, graceful prose, Hoose details the red knots’ characteristics and strategies, sampling far-flung challenges to their survival (e.g., fishermen harvesting horseshoe crabs in crucial stopover Delaware Bay). He describes research methods (cannon nets, banding), profiles scientists in international cooperation as well as activist kids, and takes a sobering look at longterm prospects for survival not just of the rufa but of most species on earth. Glorious full-page color photographs alternate with excellent smaller photos (including one of B95 taken on November 25, 2011) and many good, helpful maps in a highly informative progression of images. Exemplary source notes, including many interviews, plus acknowledgments and picture credits; a bibliography; and an index. JOANNA RUDGE LONG

Honor: Titanic: Voices from the Disaster by Deborah Hopkinson (Scholastic)
Hopkinson knows precisely what’s she doing in her coverage of the Titanic disaster: providing young readers with a basic introduction to the event without overdramatizing, drawing unwarranted conclusions, or prolonging the ordeal. She begins her account as the ship embarks on its maiden voyage and, once it sets sail, flashes back to cover its construction and grandeur as well as some of the crew’s responsibilities, which play major roles in the sinking of the ship and the rescue of the passengers. Hopkinson also introduces her “characters,” real survivors whose voices relay many of the subsequent events. She includes crew members as well as those traveling in first, second, and third class, showing both the contrasts between them as the voyage begins and the horror that binds them by night’s end. In this admirably restrained account, Hopkinson covers, but doesn’t dwell upon, the foreshadowing of iceberg reports, the heartbreaking choices in boarding the (too few) lifeboats, and the agony of those dying in the freezing water. For interested readers who want to read in more detail, Hopkinson includes comprehensive chapter notes, a listing of sources, and questions to get young people started on their own Titanic quests. Archival photographs, a timeline, a selected list of facts, short biographies of those mentioned, excerpts from selected survivor letters, a glossary, and an unseen index complete this fine book. BETTY CARTER

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Winner: In Darkness by Nick Lake (Bloomsbury)

Honor: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz (Simon)
Aristotle — Ari for short — meets Dante at the pool one summer day in 1987, and the two boys quickly strike up a friendship that will change their lives in ways both subtle and profound. Ari admires Dante’s gregarious personality, his intellectual curiosity, and his close bond with his parents, especially his father. In contrast, Ari’s own father, a Vietnam vet, remains aloof, damaged by his experience of war, and both parents refuse to discuss his imprisoned older brother. When Ari saves Dante’s life but breaks his own legs in the process, it not only strengthens their friendship but cements the bond between the two Mexican American families. When Dante’s father leaves El Paso for a one-year position at the University of Chicago, the boys stay in touch through letters. Dante had telegraphed his sexual attraction to Ari, but now comes out to his friend in writing. When Dante returns, the two cautiously resume their friendship, but when Dante gets beat up in an alley for kissing another boy, it’s a catalyst for Ari to examine how he really feels about Dante. Ari’s first-person narrative — poetic, philosophical, honest — skillfully develops the relationship between the two boys from friendship to romance, leading to the inevitable conclusion: “How could I have ever been ashamed of loving Dante Quintana?” JONATHAN HUNT

Honor: Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein (Hyperion)
Wein’s exceptional — downright sizzling — abilities as a writer of historical adventure fiction are spectacularly evident in this taut, captivating story of two young women, spy and pilot, during World War II. Wein gives us the story in two consecutive parts—the first an account by Queenie (a.k.a. Lady Julia Beaufort-Stuart), a spy captured by the SS during a mission in Nazi-occupied France. Queenie has bargained with Hauptsturmführer von Linden to write what she knows about the British war effort in order to postpone her inevitable execution. Sounding like a cross between Swallows and Amazons’s Nancy Blackett and Mata Hari, she alternately succumbs to, cheeks, and charms her captors (and readers) as she duly writes her report and, mostly, tells the story of her best friend Maddie, the pilot who dropped her over France, then crashed. Spoiler: unbeknownst to Queenie, Maddie survived the crash; part two is Maddie’s “accident report” and account of her efforts to save Queenie. Wein gives us multiple doubletakes and surprises as she ratchets up the tension in Maddie’s story, revealing Queenie’s joyously clever duplicity and the indefatigable courage of both women. This novel positively soars, in part no doubt because the descriptions of flying derive from Wein’s own experience as a pilot. But it’s outstanding in all its features — its warm, ebullient characterization; its engagement with historical facts; its ingenious plot and dramatic suspense; and its intelligent, vivid writing. DEIRDRE F. BAKER

Honor: Dodger by Terry Pratchett (HarperCollins)
Who would have the skill, the sensibility, and the sass to put Charles Dickens into a novel and then proceed to write that novel in full-octane Dickensian style? Terry Pratchett, of course. A la Oliver Twist, Dodger is a street urchin (“if you wanted to be a successful urchin you needed to study how to urch”) who makes his way in early-Victorian London as a tosher, a sewer gleaner. One rainy night he gallantly rescues a young woman who is being beaten up, and a complicated plot is set in motion. The cast includes Dickens, minor European royalty, Disraeli, Sweeney Todd, Charles Babbage, a philanthropist named Angela Burdett-Coutts who alone is worth the price of admission, and Queen Victoria herself — but none of them upstages Dodger, a boy on the make and on the brink, with his own highly developed moral code. His original take on the world and his deft way with language make him a wonderful guide through sewers, morgues, theaters, drawing rooms, pea-soup fogs, and barbershops and a story of espionage, romance, action, skullduggery, double-dealing, and heroism. It’s a glittering conjuring act, but there’s real heart here, too, as Dodger’s horizons expand to include nature, art, and love. SARAH ELLIS

Honor: The White Bicycle by Beverley Brenna (Red Deer Press)
see post at Out of the Box

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Winner: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz (Simon)

Honor: The Revolution of Evelyn Serrano by Sonia Manzano (Scholastic Press)
Set in the summer of 1969, Manzano’s solid first novel deals with the political and cultural awakening of fourteen-year-old Rosa María Evelyn del Carmen Serrano, who tells us straight off that she prefers to be called Evelyn because “El Barrio, Spanish Harlem, U.S.A., did not need another Rosa, María, or Carmen.” She’s not particularly happy with her life: her best friend has dropped her, her mother embarrasses her, and she hates the stench of overflowing garbage cans in her neighborhood. To make things worse, she has to give up her bedroom when her grandmother arrives from Puerto Rico, and Evelyn’s charismatic orange-haired Abuela is not an easy person to live with. She’s loud, messy, and opinionated, and she constantly clashes with Evelyn’s more conservative mother. Abuela becomes involved with the Young Lords, a radical Puerto Rican Nationalist group working to empower the residents of Spanish Harlem, and she shares with Evelyn pieces of her own family history relating to the 1937 Ponce Massacre, part of an earlier Nationalist movement. Evelyn becomes increasingly radicalized and joins a protest occupation of her church. Based on true events, the story develops organically through well-realized fictional characters dealing with complex family dynamics. Manzano has a gift for providing just the right amount of historical and political context for today’s young readers without slowing the pace. The story has obvious parallels to Rita Williams-Garcia’s One Crazy Summer (rev. 3/10), and the two would make a great pairing. KATHLEEN T. HORNING

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Winner: Martín de Porres: The Rose in the Desert by Gary D. Schmidt; illus. by David Diaz (Clarion)

No honor books were selected by the committee.

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Winner: My Family for the War by Anne C. Voorhoeve; trans. by Tammi Reichel (Dial)

Honor: A Game for Swallows: To Die, to Leave, to Return by Zeina Abirached; illus. by the author; trans. by Edward Gauvin (Graphic Universe/Lerner)
Comparisons to Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis are inevitable; like Satrapi’s autobiographical graphic novel, this book (also first published in French) presents a girlhood under fire in the war-torn Middle East. Here the setting is 1984 Beirut, a city segregated by religion with Christian and Muslim residents locked in unrelenting civil war. The story’s focus is a single harrowing night when Zeina’s parents, visiting her grandparents a few blocks away, must make their way home through heavy bombing. Neighbors have gathered in the family’s foyer — the safest place left — to wait out the shelling and hope for Zeina’s parents’ return. Abirached skillfully weaves flashbacks and explanatory asides into the narrative while maintaining the evening’s tension. Despite the oppressive atmosphere of fear and uncertainty, much-needed moments of levity shine through as neighbors try to distract Zeina, her younger brother, and themselves by telling amusing anecdotes, reenacting scenes from Cyrano de Bergerac, baking a cake, and partaking of fine whiskey. Stark, dramatic illustrations (mostly black backgrounds with white-outlined characters and features) include repeated motifs (flowers, dragons) that effectively capture elements of the culture and lend nuance to the high emotions through small changes in expression or detail. A poignant portrayal of a community determined to hold onto optimism and humanity in the face of dire circumstances. KATIE BIRCHER

Honor: Son of a Gun by Anne de Graaf; trans. by the author (Eerdmans)
review to come

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