2018 School Spending Survey Report
>Scary Salmon, Saucy Swede
>Although I've written here or elsewhere that I don't like to have children's-book art hanging in my house (because it reminds me of work and because I don't think much sequential-style illustration works on the wall) I was very pleased to acquire, at the ABC silent auction at BEA, a drawing by Jules Feiffer, of either a lion or a dog.
The auction was fun, the dinner following was edible (barely--scary salmon), the speakers--Jerry Pinkney, Eoin Colfer--were bearable. Adding glamour to the evening was a tribute to Katherine Paterson on the occasion of her Astrid Lindgren award, positioned as a Nobel Prize for children's literature by the Swede (I'm sorry, I don't know his name) who introduced Paterson. I was a little taken aback by this gentleman's gratuitous bragging--that's how it sounded to me--of Sweden's abstinence from armed conflict since the the Napoleonic Wars, but it played to the crowd. John McPhee's La Place de la Concorde Suisse opened my eyes to the whole armed neutrality thing, and it isn't pretty. Either.
I heard that the speakers at the children's book breakfast the next day were, um, interesting, but I wasn't there. Were you? Do tell.
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Anonymous
>Well, I can say that the b'fast the next morning was appalling. Hundreds of people and two or three waiters roaming around with cold coffee, being harrangued on all sides by under-caffeined women. A dangerous place. "Breakfast" was ice cold, rock hard bread items and not even enough in the little baskets to feed all the people at the table. If I were the sponsors, I'd ask for my money back.Posted : May 24, 2006 05:27
Kristen McLean
>Hi Roger,Next year we will be serving alligator.
I thought you might like to prepare yourself.
;)
-Kristen
Kristen McLean
Executive Director
The Association of Booksellers for Children (ABC)
Posted : May 24, 2006 05:14
Roger Sutton
>Thanks for the i.d., KT, that's Peter Wahlqvist, Swedish cultural attache. The Lindgren is the most lucrative children's-book prize, yes? Good for them (the Swedes).Posted : May 24, 2006 03:03
KT Horning
>I thought it was the Hans Christian Andersen Medal that was considered the Nobel Prize of children's literature.As for Wahlqvist, if I were in his shoes, I'd have bragged about the fact that the award is funded by the state. We're talking more than half a million U.S. dollars in prize money, too. That's no small gesture in support of children's literature and the arts. Brag away, Sweden!
Posted : May 23, 2006 09:54
rindawriter
>Wah! I want a sketch of Duck, I do, I do!Yes, "armed neutrality," a creepy phrase, if you ask me...
I have always secretly wondered about why it took so long for the official "outside" world to learn about what the Germans were doing to the Jews, though I'm not as knowledgeable in modern history as in the renaissance world. Germany, historically, was long a place where Jewish persecution went on uninhibited and even sanctioned by the status quo. So the seeds had long been germinating there and in other countries close by as well.
I myself blame a lot of the silence on so many of the pastors of the churches in Germany and in countries close to it, staying silent on the matter, although there were the few, the rare, and the courageous pastors as well as many others, of course, who did speak out early and long--and many of whom died for those actions.
We must never forget. We must never forget.
Posted : May 23, 2006 02:11