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Trivia about Newbery Award winners: At the Banquet When Marguerite Henry came to the 1949 ALA convention in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to accept the Newbery Medal for King of the Wind, she brought her horse, Misty, the subject of 1948 honoree Misty of Chincoteague. The publicity stunt was a surprise...
Not all deserving books bring home ALA awards. The books that didn’t win. Still wishing Wishes by Mượn Thị Văn; illus. by Victo Ngai Billy Miller Makes a Wish by Kevin Henkes Still dreaming Someone Builds the Dream by Lisa Wheeler; illus. by Loren Long ...
As the speeches and profiles arrived for this year’s ALA Awards special issue, we noticed a theme: so many of them address the idea of learning from others, especially those who came before. That’s part of the work of acceptance speeches, of course, as creators give credit to their influences....
Is there a specific point in a person’s life when they go from mentee to mentor? At what stage does someone become the elder statesperson? It seems to follow that age-old adage that to become an overnight success, you just need to spend years and years working away at it....
From time to time, I do consider writing nonfiction for young readers. I think about the people, places, and events that highlight the Black experience in the United States. And I think of the skill, wisdom, and knowledge it takes to find the right stories, the necessary stories to construct...
"Book Friends Forever": Alvina and Grace as kids (left) and as roommates (right). Photos courtesy of Alvina Ling. In Grace Lin’s first novel, the semiautobiographical The Year of the Dog, Pacy first meets the new girl, Melody, in the school cafeteria after the lunch lady confuses them (they’re the only...
Chin family snapshots. At left, Michael (with headphones) and Jason; at right, the brothers with their father, Raymond. Photos: Mary Chin. When my brother was in high school, he had a plan. He would call up legendary illustrator and Caldecott Medal winner Trina Schart Hyman to see if she would...
This has been a notorious year of attempts to ban children’s books by authors of color. But 2022 is also the year that Donna Barba Higuera’s middle-grade novel The Last Cuentista won the Newbery Medal. Celebrating a novel that explores stories as a human imperative is the perfect counterpoint to...
When I thought about what I wanted to say on this auspicious occasion, I knew where I wanted to begin, and where I wanted to end. I open with lines from Psalm 16:5-6. I thought about using a contemporary translation, but I prefer the poetry of the original — no...
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