Our Story
Cover art from The Little Ghost Who Lost Her Boo! by Elaine Bickell, illustration copyright 2019 by Raymond McGrath. Author Emma Otheguy on COVID-19, New York City, children's books, and contradictions. Kwame Alexander, author of The Undefeated, fetes Kadir Nelson, the book's artist and winner of the Caldecott Medal and...
Dudley Carlson: The farmers’ market was a riot of color. Red and green lettuces, orange carrots, blue and purple berries, and breads in rich browns and tans stretched for two blocks. At one end, a single booth held only green. Beautiful green beans were neatly bundled and stacked like a...
I’d like to begin by thanking the 2020 Newbery Award Selection Committee, chaired by the incomparable Krishna Grady. Thank you for the tremendous honor of making New Kid the first graphic novel in your ninety-eight-year history to receive your prestigious medal. I would also like to thank the ALA for...
When I found out on January 26th that I’d won the Legacy Award, I was ecstatic. However, it didn’t take me long — about an hour! — to start fretting about my speech. That’s just the way I am. I began working on my speech right away and had a...
Good morning, or good afternoon, or good evening, depending on when or where in the world you are reading this. As I compose this speech, I am sitting at home under a nationwide quarantine in the midst of the proliferation of a remarkable novel virus that has commandeered the attention...
I’d like to begin by thanking the 2020 Coretta Scott King Book Awards Jury, chaired by LaKeshia Darden, who gave me one of the two best near-dawn phone calls of my life! I would also like to thank the ALA for making this moment possible. This is truly an amazing...
The year was 1999, and my very first picture book, Brothers of the Knight, was slated to be published by Dial Books for Young Readers. It was written by the actress and dancer Debbie Allen and based on a stage production of the same name that she had both written...
Special Issue: ALA Awards. Original cover art by 2020 Caldecott Medal winner Kadir Nelson. “A Year with Words and Pictures — but No ALA Annual”: The Horn Book editors discuss the children’s book landscape of 2019 and the unusual circumstances of 2020. Kevin Henkes’s Children's Literature Legacy Award acceptance speech. A profile of Kevin Henkes by Dudley Carlson, Laura Dronzek, Virginia Duncan, and Susan Hirschman. A profile of Coretta Scott...
Special issue: Breaking the Rules Original cover art by Jarrett J. Krosoczka. “Rule Breakers”: essays and comics from Nina Crews, Kacen Callender, Remy Lai, Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan, Jasmine Warga, Lisa Brown, Kevin Noble Maillard, Martha Brockenbrough, Amy Sarig King, Lesléa Newman, Gene Luen Yang, Lynne Rae Perkins, Steve...
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