Subversive Children's Librarians

On Inauguration Day 2017, I was in Atlanta, far from my hometown of Takoma Park, Md. (just over the border from Washington, D.C.) and happily ensconced in a daylong educational institute for children's librarians. Among the programs featured were "Passing the Mic: Muslim Voices in Children's Literature and Lessons Learned in the Pursuit of Equity and Inclusion," "Why Is It So Difficult to Talk about Race, Culture and Other Marginalizations in Children's Literature" and "Welcoming Rainbow Families @ Your Library."

Gene Luen Yang, Nat. Ambassador for Young People's Literature, created this program.

These wonderful, enriching programs were punctuated by talks by well-known children's authors and illustrators, including Caldecott Medalists Kevin Henkes and Erin Stead, Cuban-American author/illustrator Carmen Agra Deedy, and National Book Award winner Jacqueline Woodson. We all ended the day energized and uplifted, and armed with great materials, such as a list of well-written books for kids, teens and adults by Muslim authors and featuring Muslim characters and themes. I've already used the list to order books that my library doesn't currently own.

Overall, the institute was the perfect way to spend this particular Inauguration Day, a way of countering the new administration's message of hate and fear by celebrating our rich diversity and highlighting marginalized voices. It was a day that helped remind me and other participants of our important mission of empowering ALL young readers through programs, services and books and other materials.

The institute was sponsored by the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), the children's division of the American Library Association (ALA). Interestingly -- and importantly! -- the institute took place in Atlanta because ALSC voted to cancel a bigger institute that was supposed to take place in Charlotte, N.C. last fall; the Charlotte institute was cancelled because the state passed a law preventing transgender people from using the public restroom they prefer.

For me, the ALSC institute in Atlanta was a great way to open a particularly important ALA Midwinter conference where it seemed everything we did and said stood in direct contradiction to the new administration. At times, it felt like a subversive act just being at the conference! For example, it was particularly satisfying to see hundreds of librarians from around the country taking time off from the conference to participate in the Atlanta Women's March, many of them wearing the March's trademark pink hat. ALSC Blogger Karen Ginman was one of the marchers. 

Another example was a program entitled "Racial Justice @ Your Library," sponsored by Libraries4BlackLives. And then there was the speaker chosen for the ALA President's program -- 2015 Newbery Medalist Kwame Alexander. This ALSC Blog post by Sondy Eklund gives a flavor of his talk, as does this one. Here are a few quotes Kwame's talk, as recorded by Sondy: "Librarians, fire your cannons!  Books have a job to do and words plant seeds" and "Books connect us to each other.  Books don’t segregate. We do."

(On a personal note: I was lucky to sit next to Kwame and also Caldecott Honor artist Ekua Holmes at a Friday night dinner given by Candlewick Press to celebrate their new book, Out of Wonder. Talk about inspiring -- both meeting these two incredibly talented people and also reading their new book!)

Another example of Midwinter conference subversiveness: the adulation -- and acclaim -- rightly accorded to Rep. John Lewis, whose congressional district includes Atlanta. Lewis, the Civil Rights icon, recently was excoriated as "all talk, talk, talk -- no action or results" in a tweet by President Trump. Lewis, however, has found new fame and fans in the library world for his autobiographical graphic novel trilogy, March: Books One, Two & Three, co-written by Andrew Aydin and illustrated by Nate Powell. Librarian Karen Ginman captured her excitement at meeting Lewis in this ALSC Blog post.

Lewis also made history at the Youth Media Awards, the annual announcements of the winners of such prestigious awards as the Newbery Medal, the Caldecott Medal, and more. At this year's awards, held on the morning of Jan. 23,  March: Book Three won a record four top ALA awards: the Michael Printz Award, given to the best book for teens; the Coretta Scott King Author Award, given to the best book by an African-American author; the Robert Sibert Medal, given to the best non-fiction book for kids; and the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) Non-Fiction Award. Lewis accepted the YALSA award in front a large crowd, and his speech was captured in this ALSC Blog post.

Meanwhile, several other award-winning books also spotlighted diverse voices. Illustrator Javaka Steptoe won the 2017 Caldecott Medal and the Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award for Radiant Child: The Story of Young Artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, a book about the hugely talented African-American artist.

A book about an important piece of African-American history, Freedom in Congo Square, illustrated by R. Gregory Christie and written by Carole Boston Weatherford, was one of four Caldecott Honor books.

And finalists for the YALSA Non-Fiction Award, which won by March: Book 3, included In the Shadow of Liberty: The Hidden History of Slavery, Four Presidents, and Five Black Lives, by Kenneth Davis and This Land Is Our Land: A History of American Immigration by Linda Barrett Osborne.

In fact, the Youth Media Awards themselves are a celebration of all kinds of diversity. In addition to the Caldecott  Medal, the Newbery Medal, and the Coretta Scott King Awards for books by African-American authors and illustrators, other awards presented include:

__ the Pura Belpre Award, given to the best books by Latino writer and illustrator. This year's author winner was Juana Medina for Juana and Lucas, while the illustrator award went to Raul Gonzalez for Lowriders to the Center of the Earth, written by Cathy Camper;

__ the Schneider Family Book Awards, given to books that embody an artistic expression of the disability experience. The award for young children (ages 0-10) went to Six Dots:A Story of Young Louis Braille, written by Jen Bryant and illustrated by Boris Kulikov, the award for a middle grade book (readers ages 11-13) went to As Brave As You, written by Jason Reynolds, the teen award went to When We Collided, written by Emery Lord;

__the Stonewall Book Award-Mike Morgan & Larry Romans Children's & Young Adult Literature Award, given to books of exceptional merit relating to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender experience. This year's winners were: Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgar: The Hammer of Thor, written by Rick Riordan and If I Was Your Girl, written by Meredith Russo.

ALA leaders hold some of the winning books.

Now it's time to bring all of this home, to keep up the momentum for celebrating diversity and spotlighting social justice. One thing I've committed to doing is creating a new book club, which I'm calling "Books to Action: A Social Justice Book Club for Kids and Adults." Our first meeting is Sat. Feb. 18 at 2 p.m. at the Takoma Park Maryland Library. We'll read and discuss 2-3 illustrated books (generally geared to ages 5-10) around a particular issue (I'm betting immigration might be our first topic) and then do a simple community service project. I got the idea for the book club and the name from reading about a California State Library project, and things crystallized when several patrons with young children asked if we could do a regular event based on the "Hope & Inspiration" Community Read-Out that my library offered in December.

Let me conclude this blog post with this hopeful image (with thanks to Anne LeVeque):

END NOTE: A big shout-out to librarian Mary Voors, who manages the ALSC Blog, and her team of volunteer bloggers for doing such a great job of covering the Midwinter conference!

Place Your Bets!

It's the most wonderful time of the year for children's literature fans, the time when we eagerly await the announcements of the winners of the prestigious Caldecott Medal and Newbery Medal. Those winners (and the winners of a host of other children's and teen book awards) will be announced on Monday, Jan. 23 at an early morning press event at the American Library Association's Midwinter conference in Atlanta. The event will be attended in-person by hundreds of librarians but it also will be live-streamed so folks everywhere can enjoy the excitement.

While the discussions of the "real" 2017 Caldecott and Newbery committees will remain forever secret, children's book fans around the country have been discussing and voting on their own choices for these top awards. These gatherings, called "mocks," are a wonderful way to connect with other children's book lovers who share a great enthusiasm for trying to predict the Caldecott and Newbery winners. Young readers themselves, of course, also have been participating in mocks in their classrooms and at local libraries, trying to see how close they can come to the "real" winners.

At my library, we held two mock events. In December, we hosted our third annual Mock Caldecott for Adults. In three hours, we read together our 20 finalists (which I had chosen with my co-host, Alison Morris) and discussed them according to the Caldecott criteria. Our mock Caldecott winner was They All Saw a Cat, written and illustrated by Brendan Wenzel. We had two mock Honor books: Du Iz Tak?, written and illustrated by Carson Ellis, and Daniel Finds a Poem, written and illustrated by Micha Archer.

Our second event was the culmination of a year of monthly Caldecott Club programs for kids and adults. At each program, we read four books, discuss them according to our "kid-friendly" Caldecott criteria, and then vote on our favorite of the evening. That book then becomes one of our finalists. Earlier this month, at our January Caldecott Club we re-read all of our nine finalists as well as a ringer that I tossed in -- They All Saw a Cat. I was interested to see if our Caldecott Club members, who range in age from 3 up, would like the book as much as those who attended our Mock Caldecott for Adults. It turns out they did: They All Saw a Cat easily won our Caldecott Cub mock election. We also chose one mock Honor book, School's First Day of School, written by Adam Rex and illustrated by Christian Robinson.

Looking at the results of mock Caldecott programs held around the country, it's clear that They All Saw a Cat is a favorite. But that doesn't necessarily mean it will win the 2017 Caldecott Medal. Having served on the 2016 Caldecott Medal committee, I can tell you that we read both more widely and more deeply than others would be able to do. Even more importantly, we spent two days in intense discussion of our nominated books. Predicting a winner beforehand would have been truly impossible.

Still, it's fun for those not serving on the awards committees to try to predict the winners! This year, for the second time, the Association for Library Service to Children has dedicated a space on its blog for reports of the mock winners across the country. While the most popular mocks focus on the Caldecott Medal and the Newbery Medal, some libraries also hold mocks focused on the Geisel Award (given to the best book for beginning readers), the Sibert Medal (given to the best non-fiction book for kids), the Printz Award (given to the best book for teens), and more.

And, for those who can't get enough of trying to predict the winners, there are discussion blogs focused on various awards. These include Heavy Medal (focused on the Newbery Medal), Calling Caldecott, Someday My Printz Come, and the newest blog, Guessing Geisel. But there's nothing like hearing the awards announced in real time. So mark your calendars for January 23 at 8 a.m. and join the excitement via the live webcast!

Winnie-the-Pooh and Me

A year ago today, children's book illustrator Sophie Blackall won the 2016 Caldecott Medal for her illustrations for Finding Winnie: The True Story of the World's Most Famous Bear.

Sophie gets "the call"

 It was a huge day for Sophie, and a big day for me too, as I was a member of the 2016 Caldecott Committee that chose Finding Winnie as the "most distinguished American picture book for children."

Here I am with some of my fellow "Caldecrew;" our wonderful chair, Rachel Payne, is second from right in back. 

A quick recap of the story recounted in Finding Winnie: In the book, author Lindsay Mattick tells of the impetuous decision by her grandfather, a Canadian veterinarian by the name of Harry Colebourn, to purchase a bear cub for $20 as he was heading off to serve in World War 1. Harry brought the cub, which he named Winnie for his native Winnipeg, across the Atlantic with him and she was a mascot at his training camp in England. Before Harry and his unit left to fight in France, however, he realized that it would be best to leave Winnie behind at the London Zoo. It was there that a young boy named Christopher Robin Milne met Winnie and decided to name his favorite stuffed bear after her; his father, novelist A.A. Milne, immortalized the name in a book of stories about his son's bear, a book called Winnie-the-Pooh.

It's a rather incredible-but-true tale, and one that had been little known in the United States before the publication of Finding Winnie. But the story, made even more memorable with Sophie's stunning artwork, now has found a wide audience, thanks to the Caldecott Medal.

Six months after our committee chose Finding Winnie for the 2016 Caldecott Medal, Sophie formally accepted the award with a heart-tugging speech in which she noted that Winnie-the Pooh was the first book she bought with her own money: "It was an old, worn edition. A prop in my mother's antique shop. I read it in my secret spot under a table. I used to hide the book so no one would buy it. Eventually, my mother sold it to me for a dollar, and I polished the steps to earn the money.

"I had never known a book like it. A book with interjections and digressions and ponderings. One that meandered and backtracked, that bounced and hummed, that drew you in so close that you felt you were in the very forest itself, and at the same time allowed you to step back and see the actual form of a book. With characters so endearing you hated to leave them behind. So you didn't."

Sophie's cover for the July-August Horn Book.

As Sophie spoke those words at the Newbery-Caldecott banquet on the night of June 26, 2016, I had a flashback to my own introduction to Winnie-the-Pooh (and The House At Pooh Corner) years ago. Since then, I have discovered -- or, rather, rediscovered -- a number of ways that my life has been connected to Winnie-the-Pooh, years before I served on the 2016 Caldecott Committee.

Some of these connections are tangential, such as the fact that some of my first children's books were given to me by my mother's cousin, whom I called Aunt Priscilla. She worked for a Boston-based publisher named Little, Brown. Guess who published Finding Winnie? Yep that's right --Little, Brown, now based in New York.

Here's another, more direct connection. I had somehow never read Winnie-the-Pooh as a child, yet because my sister, seven years younger than I, was passionately attached to the Disney version of the Milne books, I certainly knew of the character.

But it wasn't until I was in my late 20's that I first read the "real" Winnie-the-Pooh. My husband and I were spending the day in Savannah, Ga. and stopped in at a bookstore called The Book Lady. There my husband spotted used hardback copies of Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner, books that he had loved as a child. Astounded that I had never read them, my husband bought them on the spot and we read them aloud, a chapter at a time, when we returned home. They became instant favorites of mine, and I've re-read them numerous times since then.

Today, in yet another rather amazing connection, our son now is a student at the Savannah College of Art and Design and he lives just a block from The Book Lady.  My husband and I love to visit Savannah, and The Book Lady is a must-do destination each time. (And I still have wonderful memories of reading Winnie-the-Pooh aloud to my son who was both charmed and calmed by the stories.)

One final -- and very direct -- connection to Winnie-the-Pooh: in the early 1980's, I was working as a Washington correspondent for The Albuquerque Tribune, a paper owned by Scripps Howard. The main company had just formed the DC-based Scripps Howard News Service and was scrambling for copy to put out on its wire. While I enjoyed covering politics for the Trib, I really wanted to write national features for the news service. First, however, I had to convince the editors to create that beat.

Elliott Graham and the original Winnie-the-Pooh

To persuade them, I decided to write a few features in my own time, and one of them relates directly to Winnie-the-Pooh. I had read about the fact the real Winnie-the-Pooh and his stuffed companions resided (at that time) in a New York publishing house and so, the next time I visited New York, I set up an appointment to see them. I also got to meet their human companion, a lovely man named Elliott Graham who actually chaperoned Winnie-the-Pooh on visits around the country.

My article on Pooh and Elliott went out on the Scripps wire and got picked up by newspapers across the country. While I never did convince my bosses to start a national features beat, the Pooh article inspired me to create a weekly children's book review column for Scripps Howard News Service. I wrote that column for 23 year until the news service was ended in 2013. This blog is the successor to that column, and now here I am, once again writing about Winnie-the-Pooh -- only this time in my second-career persona as a children's librarian, and incredibly proud member of the 2016 Caldecott Committee!

One final note: a mega "Thank You" to my fellow "Caldec-crew" members and our incredible chair, Rachel Payne. I've definitely gained 14 wonderful new friends through our work together as a committee. And, of course, a big "Hurrah!" to Sophie for creating such extraordinary illustrations in Finding Winnie. As Sophie put it so beautifully in her Caldecott acceptance speech: "To the 2016 Caldecott committee: we are forever connected, you and I. You are my committee and I am your medalist." Indeed.