The Day After All The Calls

 Today is the Oscars, the Tonys, and the Grammys of KidLit--American Library Association's Youth Media Awards. The Newbery and Caldecott winners were announced today, as well as the Printz, Siebert, Schneider Family, Stonewall, Coretta Scott King, and others--it's a great big festival of happiness. Nowadays there's a live online feed of the award announcements that draws several thousand kidlit watchers, including, of course, myself. While I technically did have a book published in 2022, there was absolutely no chance that She Persisted: Rosalind Franklin (of which I am quite proud) was going to win anything so I was in all senses a spectator this year.

It's lovely to have a book in contention but it's also strangely nerve-wracking. None of the major awards announce finalists ahead of time. However, winners do get "the call" before the official announcements--traditionally calls were made on Monday mornings very very early--that was what happened when I got an Honor in 2016--but now the switch seems to have been made to sometime the weekend before. That was true in 2021 when I got a call for Fighting Words, and according to a tweet from my friend Christina Sootornvat, it was true this year as well. 

Christina got the call while selling Girl Scout cookies.

I always have favorites going in but hesitate to say what they are, because I know I haven't read a full sampling of the books. I hadn't read any of the Printz awardees this year, nor any of the Caldecotts, though I had books I loved that didn't get any mention. I loved Christina's The Last Mapmaker but I read it so long ago, when she kindly sent me an ARC, that it was almost a surprise to me that it was still eligible.

There are always favorites left off the lists. Both last night and this morning I saw posts online reminding authors and illustrators that books do not need shiny award stickers to be valuable to children. I know this with all my heart. The current surprise runaway hit from the fifth-graders enrolled in ALI? Science Comics: Robots. Honestly probably about as likely to have gotten an award as my Rosalind Franklin book--but 39 kids from a single elementary school in southwest Virginia just requested copies, as did 47 kids from a single school in eastern Kentucky the week before. 

I have firsthand evidence that sometimes writers won't know the impact they've had on readers for years. Twenty-one years ago I published a novel set on the Appalachian Trail called Halfway to the Sky. It's still technically in print, though only electronically. It got good reviews, not great ones (a brief check just now on Amazon finds the phrase, "a fairly standard coming-of-age novel") and won absolutely nothing, though I did have several teachers tell me they enjoyed sharing it with their classes. About five years ago I got a letter from a young woman who wrote to tell me that my story had changed her life--because of it she started hiking. She found she loved the mountains and the woods. She listed some of the places she'd hiked and enclosed a photograph of herself on a summit.

Then I got another letter, from a young woman who'd started hiking because of Dani. She enclosed a photo of herself on the top of Kilimanjaro. 

Then a third letter. Then a fourth. Extraordinary.

I read something you wrote, and my life changed.

No one can say anything better to any author, anywhere.

This year's Newbery Award went to a middle-grades novel called Freewater. I bought it last summer when I happily found myself in Anderson's Bookstore (which resides in the same suburb of Chicago as the nearest TopGolf--my son lives in Chicago, and TopGolf is a good time. So is Anderson's.) I remember holding Freewater and another book (don't remember that one) in my hands, telling myself to pick one (why I was exercising such uncommon restraint I don't know) and going with Freewater on the grounds that it sucked to be a debut author as Amina Luqman-Dawson was, while we were still halfway under pandemic restrictions--I think the author of the forgotten book must have been more wildly known. Everyone is going to read Amina's book now. Everyone will know its name. This is fabulous, and it's even more fabulous that both Amina and her editor came out of We Need Diverse Books' mentorship program. Several years ago some leaders in children's literature saw that we needed to be listening to, upholding, and honoring many more voices, from all backgrounds, not just white peoples'. I'm so thrilled about this. I once wrote a book about enslaved children called Jefferson's Sons. It's out of print but I sometimes get letters from people asking if I know where they can still get a copy. I don't. I've been suggesting people read Crossing Ebeneezer Creek instead, and I do love that book--but hey, here's Freewater, try this one, too. I'm pretty sure you're going to love it.