Late last summer, the Horn Book staff gathered at Roger’s house for our annual editorial and organizational planning meeting. It was one of those Goldilocks sorts of days: too hot in the sun, too cold in the shade. This winter’s Snowpocalypse wasn’t even a gleam in anyone’s eye.

Our office had recently moved from Charlestown to the Fenway; Roger’s home renovation was finally underway; his dog Brownie (not Buster, may he RIP) was starting to come out of his shell. Fueled by caffeine, protein, and baked goods, we had a productive day discussing, among other things, the #WeNeedDiverseBooks campaign, our new What Makes a Good? e-newsletter, and ideas for this year’s Special Issue: Transformations.

Cut to today: we are still talking about diverse books and our commitment to them; still talking about what makes stuff good (there are two such articles in this issue); still going on about the weather and about food, always food. The more things change…

But some things have changed. This year we saw more ALA winners of color than ever before. And also more snow than Boston has ever seen. So change, yes. But when is something transformed?

To answer this thorny question, we’ve asked some experts in the field — “Transformers,” we’re calling them — whose work is often one thing…and also something else. Merlin as a child? Cinderella as a lesbian? Beauty and her Beast in Africa? Sure, why not, as long as it’s done thoughtfully (Gareth Hinds’s word), authentically (T. A. Barron), and with imagination. “It’s the essence of a mythical character that the writer needs to catch,” says Susan Cooper (the Optimus Prime of these Transformers, if there ever was one). “If you can manage that, your portrayal…will be true.”

Some adaptations land with a thud. For others, it’s like defying…well, you know. In his feature article “Hijacking the Pumpkin Coach,” Gregory Maguire talks about the constancy of impermanence vis-à-vis stories. From a young age Maguire was transformed — “from a somewhat browbeaten if cheery kid into an intrepid adventurer” — by story. As a writer he has deliberately sought out and followed those breadcrumbs left by Andersen and Baum, those tantalizing gaps in story or “loose-hanging narrative DNA” that allow an author’s imagination to soar.

In her essay “In the Time of Daily Magic,” Alice Hoffman writes about how her thoughts were set aloft by the Half Magic of Edward Eager, who was himself indebted to E. Nesbit (in a 1958 Horn Book article he referred to himself as a “second-rate E. Nesbit”; as-if!). Magic can be found in the most ordinary-seeming of places, Hoffman argues, as long as one is receptive to the possibility. “All you have to do is walk out the door…and turn the corner, and magic will be waiting for you. All you have to do is read.”

If only it were so easy for the star of Book & Me, the new comics series by Charise Mericle Harper about an author and her not-always-cooperative — but always hugely entertaining — literary creation. Read about Harper’s inspiration for this series on page 21, then look for more Book & Me strips throughout this issue of the Magazine; the story continues at hbook.com/book-and-me. This is a first for The Horn Book, and we’re thrilled to be trying it — let us know what you think!

Change happens one story, one manuscript, one book at a time, but transformation usually takes time and requires a broader view. Was 2015 an anomalous year for ALA winners? Is Boston’s Snowpocalypse the new normal? We hope not, but these things don’t happen in a vacuum. Be the change, as the saying goes, and let’s keep the conversation going.

From the May/June 2015 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.