Saturday, June 23
10:00 AM Thanhha Lai, Newbery honoree for Inside Out and Back Again
11:00 AM Shane Evans, Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award winner for Underground
12:00 PM Patrick McDonnell, Caldecott honoree for Me… Jane
1:00 PM Jack Gantos, Newbery Medalist and Scott O’Dell Award winner for Dead End in Norvelt
2:00 PM John Corey Whaley, Printz Award winner for Where Things Come Back
2:30 PM Susan Cooper, Margaret A. Edwards Award winner for The Dark is Rising Sequence

Sunday, June 24
10:00 AM Eugene Yelchin, Newbery honoree for Breaking Stalin’s Nose
11:00 AM John Rocco, Caldecott honoree for Blackout
12:00 PM Chris Raschka, Caldecott Medalist for A Ball for Daisy
1:00 PM Allen Say, Sibert Award honoree for Drawing from Memory
2:00 PM Melissa Sweet, winner of the Sibert Award for Balloons over Broadway: The True Story of the Puppeteer of Macy’s Parade
3:00 PM Kadir Nelson, Coretta Scott King Author Award winner and Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award honoree for Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans

Stop by the booth at any time to grab a poster or a ticket for the special Awards issue of the Magazine (available for pick-up on Monday). For more information about ALA events hosted by The Horn Book and our sister companies School Library Journal, Library Journal, and Junior Library Guild, click here.

The post Live Five at ALA Schedule appeared first on The Horn Book.

This year’s winners of the Carnegie and Kate Greenaway medals—the UK’s Newbery and Caldecott equivalents—were announced yesterday. The awards are presented by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP), and this year’s choices are unprecedented, with the medals going to the author and illustrator of the same work.

From CILIP’s press release:

Not only is this the second consecutive Carnegie Medal for Patrick Ness (a feat only achieved once before, in 1979 and 1980 by Peter Dickinson); but for the first time ever, the same book has also won the CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal—sister award to the Carnegie Medal—with Jim Kay taking the prize for his haunting illustrations for A Monster Calls.

Congratulations to Patrick Ness, Jim Kay, Walker Books, and Candlewick Press (the book’s U.S. publisher)! Read The Horn Book Magazine review here.

The post Carnegie and Kate Greenaway medals announced appeared first on The Horn Book.

Roger Sutton and Rebecca Stead prepare to announce the awards. Photo: Mark Tuchman.

Photo: Mark Tuchman.

A large crowd gathered to listen and tweet. Photo: Mark Tuchman.

Photo: Mark Tuchman.

NONFICTION WINNER:
Chuck Close: Face Book, written and illustrated by Chuck Close (Abrams Books for Young Readers) 

NONFICTION HONOR WINNERS:
• Georgia in Hawaii: When Georgia O’Keeffe Painted What She Pleased by Amy Novesky, illustrated by Yuyi Morales (Harcourt Children’s Books, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt imprint)
• The Elephant Scientist by Caitlin O’Connell & Donna M. Jackson, photographs by Caitlin O’Connell and Timothy Rodwell (Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt imprint)

Photo: Mark Tuchman.

Photo: Mark Tuchman.

FICTION AWARD WINNER:
No Crystal Stair: A Documentary Novel of the Life and Work of Lewis Michaux, Harlem Bookseller by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson, illustrated by R. Gregory Christie (Carolrhoda Lab, an imprint of Lerner)

FICTION HONOR WINNERS:
• Life: An Exploded Diagram by Mal Peet (Candlewick Press)
• Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein (Hyperion Books for Children, a Disney imprint)

Photo: Mark Tuchman.

Photo: Mark Tuchman.

Photo: Mark Tuchman.

Photo: Mark Tuchman.

PICTURE BOOK AWARD WINNER:
Extra Yarn by Mac Barnett, illustrated by Jon Klassen (Balzer + Bray, a HarperCollins imprint)

PICTURE BOOK HONOR WINNERS:
• And Then It’s Spring by Julie Fogliano, illustrated by Erin E. Stead (Roaring Brook Press, a Macmillan imprint)
• And the Soldiers Sang by J. Patrick Lewis, illustrated by Gary Kelley (Creative Editions)

Photo: Mark Tuchman.

Photo: Mark Tuchman.

Photo: Mark Tuchman.

After the announcements, BEA attendees looked at the winning books in the Horn Book booth. Photo: Mark Tuchman.

Mark Tuchman is the Creative Director of Library Journal and School Library Journal.

The post Photos from the 2012 BGHB announcement at BEA appeared first on The Horn Book.

I am lucky. Over the past twenty-five years, I have known Kevin Henkes as a very young author, a new husband, a brand-new father, a newly successful author-artist, an experienced father, an extremely successful author and supremely successful author-artist, a non-temperamental star on business trips, a joyous companion on holidays, and, always, a much-loved and loving friend.

It all started when Kevin was nineteen and came to New York with his portfolio and the dummy for his first picture book. He had made a list, in order of preference, of his choices of publishers. Greenwillow was number one. I remember looking up and seeing this apparent child walk into my office. I said something like, “What did your mother say when you told her you were coming to New York?” He looked slightly embarrassed and said, “Well, she cried.” Then I looked at his portfolio. It was the work of a young man, but it was the work of someone who knew what he was doing and where he wanted to go. There was nothing tentative or out of place. And the dummy—a completely finished dummy of his first book, All Alone—showed that he knew what a picture book was, and that it was an art form in which he was completely at home.

I remember thinking that talent like this did not stay undiscovered for long. “Where is your next appointment?” I asked. And when he said “Harper,” I accepted the dummy on the spot. Then I went to the telephone to call his mother.

A few weeks later, Kevin called to tell me he planned to drop out of college and devote himself to working on his book. “You can’t,” I said. I predicted every doom I could think of. A college degree was obligatory. How could he support himself? It was a precipitate and crazy decision. He was polite—and adamant. And as on so many other occasions over the years, he knew what he was doing.

In those early years, Kevin came to New York once or twice a year. We would give him an empty office, and he would write. By the end of the visit, his next book would be well under way. He would also help my assistant with the mail, read and report (brilliantly) on the unsolicited manuscripts (years later, he was the first reader of Suzanne Freeman’s The Cuckoo’s Child, and I will always remember his excitement when he told me about it), go out to get coffee for anyone who would let him, read every Greenwillow F&G and bound galley, and lunch with the younger members of the department, all of whom were his friends. He found Manhattan stimulating and wonderful. He went to the theater, he walked all over, he conquered the subway, and he stayed in a hostel run by nuns and paid $8.50 a night for his room.

I remember when he first showed that he could be funny in his books—when the little boy in Clean Enough iced the soap with his father’s shaving cream. I remember when he enlarged Margaret & Taylor from a brief picture book to an early chapter book—presaging the novels to come. I remember when he changed his human characters to his signature mice—which allowed them the freedom to act in ways that are acceptable for mice but questionable for humans. And I remember when he wrote Words of Stone.

It was the winter of 1991. I read it, Elizabeth Shub read it, and oh, we talked. It needed work. Lots of work. But Kevin was becoming known for his mice, had written several very interesting shorter novels, and his popularity was growing. Would he listen to us, or would he want to show the novel to another publisher? And would they publish it as it stood, in order to have him on their list? It is a perennial problem for publishers, and in this case the ending was a happy one for Greenwillow. I did not know then what a perfectionist Kevin is. I did not know that there is no limit to the amount of work he will do to make something right. But I learned. And I think he learned. He never again showed us anything until he felt that each word, each sentence, each punctuation mark was exactly as he wanted it. I have known him to go over a picture-book manuscript for weeks and even months, refining, perfecting, honing, reading it aloud, listening, and listening some more. He is always open to suggestion, but he trusts himself, and certainly that trust has proved to be merited.

One of the things that distinguished Kevin as a young author, and has continued and grown as the years have passed, is his love and respect for the children’s books that came before. When I first knew him, he was a regular at the Cooperative Children’s Book Center in Madison. He was a passionate admirer of Crockett Johnson, Ruth Krauss, Margaret Wise Brown, Marvin Bileck, James Marshall, and many other authors and artists from the forties, fifties, and sixties. Of course that thrilled me, having grown up at Harper and learned almost everything I knew from Ursula Nordstrom. Kevin was always willing to listen to a “When I Was Young at Harper” story. And his was not an academic love. Recently he and his children, now aged ten and seven, made a list of the books he had read aloud to the two of them in the last couple of years. There were fifty-four novels on the list, including Mr. Popper’s Penguins, Freddy the Detective, all the Ramona books, The Moffats, Gone-Away Lake, and The Twenty-One Balloons. Both kids are avid readers on their own, and both kids have always been read to separately as well as together.

Kevin and his wife, Laura Dronzek, live in a big house at the end of their street. The large yard is a gathering place for the neighborhood children. Laura is a superb painter as well as a children’s book artist. She is talented, generous, wise, funny, loving, unflappable—and the best cook I know. When Olive’s Ocean was named a Newbery Honor Book, she picked up the phone, and every friend and neighbor arrived at the house that evening to celebrate. Laura bakes with the ease of someone opening a jar of peanut butter, and there was a huge cake with a facsimile of the Newbery Honor Medal, cookies, and champagne. I think the neighborhood was as excited and as happy as the Henkes family. And I understand that this year the celebration was even bigger and better. A friend of theirs recently wrote me, “Sometimes I just can’t believe the amount of artistic talent, grace, and friendliness that dwells in that house.” Anyone who has read his novels or his picture books knows how important family is to Kevin. Parents are three-dimensional and interesting. Children are respected and thoughtful. They enjoy each other, and they listen, eat, laugh, work, and play—together. Lilly, Julius, and their parents; Fanny and her father; Owen and his parents; Martha Boyle and her mother, father, grandmother, and siblings; Spoon, Joanie, and the other Gilmores; Sheila Rae and Louise—families all. Just like Kevin, Laura, Will, and Clara.

Kevin is almost as old now as I was when we first met. And his son, Will, is just nine years younger than Kevin was on his first trip to New York. Time is a funny thing. But what has not changed in all these twenty-five years is Kevin’s joy in his work, his appreciation of what preceded him, and his excitement at the possibilities of perfecting his craft. At any signing, people tell him about their daughter Lilly or their son Owen. And in the last few years they have begun telling him that they grew up on his books. They tell him what his books have meant to them and to their children. The emotion in the air is love. But then, that is the emotion that surrounds Kevin—from family, friends, readers, librarians, colleagues, teachers, and booksellers.

Someone once asked me, years ago, if I knew from the very beginning where Kevin was going and what he would do in the future. I said I had always known he was bursting with talent but no, I had had no idea of what the future would hold. That is equally true today. But I knew then, and I know now, that whatever it is, it will be worth the wait. And for now, all I can say is, “WOW.”

The post Kevin Henkes—Twenty-five Years appeared first on The Horn Book.

Watercolors:
They don’t stay where you put them. You lay down a nice, beautiful wash, and five minutes later it’s all collecting in pools and drying like rings under a coffee cup. Then you rush in and swab the dark patches just slightly, lightening them to match their surround. It’s instinctive; you can’t help it, even though you know all the while that so many white blobs will soon appear, sending new rings of color flowing out from each botched repair. I would have illustrated E. Nesbit’s The Enchanted Castle in lovely watercolors, but ended up corralling all those unruly washes within more dependable pen-and-ink lines, and even punching up their tonal gradations with ink hatchings.

Pastels:
I have a great, big set of pastels that I bought in college. Though they’re thick sticks and clumsy for details, they can create some marvelous effects. One of my earlier books, Mirra Ginsburg’s The Sun’s Asleep Behind the Hill, had soft clouds of pastel rubbed into watercolor in many places. But pastels do send up clouds of dust—and some of these colors contain terrible toxins. So these days the chalky sticks just sit in chromatically ordered rows within their futuristic plastic case, unused. I’m afraid of my pastels.

Colored Pencils:
I really don’t like the kind of color a colored pencil produces unless it reaches near solid coverage. If you have any area to cover, this can mean a tremendous amount of work. You scrub and scrub and scrub until you’ve laid down a solid layer of color. Mrs. Lovewright’s green argyle socks, for example, in Lore Segal’s The Story of Mrs. Lovewright and Purrless, Her Cat. Then you close up shop for the night, and in the morning, you see that you haven’t done such a good job: white specks of paper show all through the dulled-out green. So you go over it again, day after day. Even simple lines, like the paisley of Mrs. Lovewright’s house dress, break up. For the longest time I thought my eyes played tricks on me, and wishful thinking made me see a stronger color than was there. But some other artist, I forget who, recently confirmed my experience. So now I hold the paper responsible for this dirty trick: decompressing overnight, and undoing the day’s work.

Then there is the disastrous situation when one particular color (say, the blue-gray of her dress’s shadows and her walls’ wainscotting) is discontinued in mid-book. Your one remaining pencil grows shorter and shorter, you husband it all you can, no store carries that color anymore—in fact, the company has gone out of business, or merged with another—and you can’t create it by blending other colors. Pencils don’t blend. Nor can they be erased.

Acrylics:
As part of my art education, I was taught to disdain acrylics. And from what I’ve done with them, I haven’t been convinced otherwise. They are excellent, though, for ease of wash-up.

Computer:
I think the computer is an excellent collage machine, but for actual drawing—well, it doesn’t exactly meet my needs, or perhaps I don’t meet the computer’s. I’ve taught myself Painter 4, and have yet to create even a doodle worth saving.

And then there are oils. There’s nothing like them for emulating Old Master oil paintings, which accounts for my three Grimm tales, Hansel and Gretel, Rumpelstiltskin, and Rapunzel. Also American primitive paintings, as in Anne Isaacs’s Swamp Angel. My only other oil picture book, I think, is The Wheels on the Bus. Candy-colored, thick and almost chewable, spreading thin but still brilliant, showing brushstrokes or smoothly hiding them, and always staying exactly where you put it, oil paint was the only choice. On top of which, I could come home from work with the wonderful scent of linseed oil and turpentine in my clothes.

The post Studio Views: Why I Use Oil Paints So Much appeared first on The Horn Book.