It’s been a wonderful experience with this book. I think the best story I can tell is this: I was in Chicago reading at a very diverse school, with a lot of brown-skinned kids. A biracial kid came up to me and put his arm up to mine and said, “You and I are the same color.” Then he said, “And I’m the same color as Thunder Boy.” It was a wonderful moment, and I started to cry. So the boy hugged me, and about eighty other kids hugged me on their way back to their classrooms. I was really crying by the end of it. A little girl asked, “Why are you crying? Are you sad?” I said, “No, I’ve never been hugged by this many people in a row!” It’s amazing how much love this book has received from readers, and now from the Boston Globe–Horn Book Awards. Thank you.

From the January/February 2017 issue of The Horn Book Magazine. Read Thunder Boy Jr. illustrator Yuyi Morales's speech here. For more on the 2016 Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards, click on the tag BGHB16.