| From
the July/August 2007 issue of The Horn Book Magazine
Editorial
The Stupids Live
 ook
awards go to people, not books. This is because people care and
books don’t. Yet while Susan Patron may rightfully allow herself,
in perpetuity, to be called a “Newbery author,” or David
Wiesner a “Caldecott artist,” it is for particular accomplishments
— specific books — not for any other books or grocery
lists they may have composed in the past or have waiting in their
futures. We give the award to the creator, but we give it for
a book.
The Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal, awarded by ALA
biannually, has two signal differences from the Newbery and Caldecott.
Wilder winners need not be United States citizens or residents (although,
thus far, they all have been). And the Wilder Medal rewards an author
not for a book from the past year but for one, or more than one,
that has “over a period of years made a substantial contribution
to literature for children.” There is some complicated arithmetic
to that “period of years,” but suffice it to say that
the Wilder Medal rewards books that stick around.
Books have that virtue: they stick around, each
brought to life again and again as another reader, another generation
of readers, turns its pages. The most durable outlive their readers
and creators alike. Although being dead is no impediment to winning
the Wilder award (nor is it to the Newbery or Caldecott, incidentally),
there was some surprise when this year’s medal (I was a committee
member) was given to author and illustrator James Marshall, who
died in 1992. But you don’t win the Wilder Medal for being
alive: you win it for having created books that are alive.
Most author-illustrators are happy if just one of their characters
takes hold in the public imagination. James Marshall gave children
George and Martha; Viola Swamp (née Miss Nelson); Fox and
his easy-reader friends; the Cut-Ups; and Stanley Q. Stupid, his
family, and their wonderful dog Kitty. Despite the title of their
last outing — The Stupids Die — the Stupids
and the rest are all still here, oblivious to our prizes but generous,
in perpetuity, with their gifts.
From the July/August 2007 issue of The
Horn Book Magazine |
