Salley Mavor and Roger Sutton

For the past few weeks we have been housing a treasure. Salley Mavor, who won a Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Pocketful of Posies, created an original piece for our January/February Magazine cover. When I picked it up from the photographer a few weeks ago, I brought it back to the office to store it here because Salley and her husband were enjoying some R&R on a boat off the coast of Turkey.

We’ve pulled the art out of hiding quite often, showing it to visitors and just taking some time to gaze in amazement. Yesterday, Salley came to pick it up and we found it hard to say good-bye to the art— and to Salley, who sat down for lunch with us and told stories about Turkey, her RISD days, and life on Cape Cod.

She took a lot of photos of the office; we’re wondering if they might show up on her blog soon. We took some of her, too, to accompany her speech in the January issue. Here’s a sneak peek at part of the cover, followed by two of the Artist at Work photos.

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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.]

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Everybody has something that will get them talking, and for Mr. Aldrin it was SCUBA-diving.

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I’m all for writers, award committee members, reviewers, teachers, and librarians “trying out” books with kids, but I think we need to be watchful of what they tell us. My colleague Anne Quirk talks about the “Steve and Daphne Show” she witnessed one year at a Best Books for Young Adults committee, where, as dutifully supplied by a committee member, opinions from these two teens from a single high school library seemed to be providing the pivotal swing vote. I myself like to use the fact that the two-year-old from downstairs loves to scream “ROAR ROAR ROAR” as evidence that Bob Shea’s Dinosaur Vs. Bedtime should win the Caldecott Medal.

But talk about experimenter effect! Zena Sutherland used to quote Ursula Nordstrom as saying that kids will enjoy the telephone book if it means they’re getting their mother’s attention, just as politicians know not to say that Harold Robbins is their favorite writer. Everybody wants to make somebody happy. And just because your kids like or don’t like something doesn’t mean that other kids will feel the same way. Proximity does not an expert witness make.

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