Horn Book readers are a particularly savvy and wide-ranging bunch: historically and primarily librarians, plus authors and illustrators, publishing professionals, ­booksellers, academics, teachers, students, families. “Children’s literature enthusiasts,” as we say, and it’s always interesting to hear backstories about people’s entry into this group. Mine was via childhood reading and fairy tales, then the Center for the Study of Children’s Literature at Simmons University (celebrating its fiftieth anniversary — I’m almost the same age!), journals production, and educational publishing. In this ALA-themed issue, several of the Newbery, Caldecott, CSK, and Children’s Literature Legacy ­winners share their own “origin stories” and/or those of the projects that brought them this year’s accolades.

Starting on page 8, Children’s Literature Legacy Award winner Carole Boston ­Weatherford credits her family: “All that I am is because of my late parents, both of whom were educators” and “I am a children’s book author because I am Caresse and Jeffery’s mother. Before they arrived, I envisioned a career writing poetry for adults. Then I took my preschoolers to library storytimes.” Carolyn L. Garnes, winner of the 2025 Coretta Scott King–Virginia Hamilton Practitioner Award for Lifetime Achievement (see page 50), writes: “My journey to librarianship has been nothing short of unexpected” — a great narrative hook into an impressive and expansive biography and career.

Fine artist and first-time picture-book illustrator Rebecca Lee Kunz, winner of the Caldecott Medal for Chooch Helped (see page 22), met the story’s author, Andrea L. Rogers, “as she was signing books at Cherokee National Holiday. Magic was afoot! A serendipitous meeting, a stomp dance, an email exchanged.” A previous CSK and Pura Belpré honoree, C. G. Esperanza is this year’s CSK Illustrator winner and a Caldecott honoree for My Daddy Is a Cowboy. Esperanza says this book “was my first time painting a horse,” notoriously one of the hardest animals to draw. In doing so, he learned a good deal about them, and about cowboys and Afro-Panamanian culture, which he shares with readers beginning on page 41.

Starting on page 32, CSK Author winner (and five-time honoree, plus the S­teptoe Award) Jason Reynolds describes his thought process and inspiration behind ­Twenty-Four Seconds from Now…: A Love Story, from Truth or Dare to teenage ­tenderness to Judy Blume to heart-to-heart conversations with old friends. Erin Entrada Kelly, now a two-time Newbery Medalist with The First State of Being, leaves her own heart wide open while taking us through a wrenching cancer ­diagnosis and celebrating the ­children’s book ­community support network, ­beginning on page 14: “You who put books into the hands of readers and fight for their right to access the stories they need, when they need them, and champion anti-censorship and the ­freedom to read…Without you, [readers] never would have known [book creators]. More importantly, we never would have known them.”

If you want to know more about what we really think, check page 48 for our tongue-in-cheek “Mind the Gap” Awards: “the books that didn’t win” at ALA but that we believe deserve recognition. This year’s “The Year in Words and Pictures” article, our annual look-back feature, resides online: hbook.com/ALA-2025. There you’ll also find expanded coverage of this year’s Youth Media Awards, including more on the fabulous honor books, which, as usual, deserve their own spotlight.

At ALA Annual in Philadelphia, please find me at booth 705 to talk about ­favorite books, swap origin stories, and discuss the just-announced Boston Globe–Horn Book Award winners. And: as of this writing, the Library of Congress’s leader remains a ­credentialed, qualified library professional, Robert Randolph Newlen, if not the ­superlative Dr. Carla Hayden. As we know, librarians are not “just” people who like books. There are rules, guidelines, qualifications, procedures, and consequences for ­running a library. Keep calling, writing, and letting Congress know your thoughts, beliefs, and values around the people’s library, archival and institutional memory, and any (and all!) of our at-risk shared cultural institutions.

From the July/August 2025 issue of The Horn Book Magazine: Special Issue: ALA Awards. For more speeches, profiles, and articles, click the tag ALA 2025.

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