Kwame Alexander: Inspiration Incarnate

When Kwame Alexander won the 2015 Newbery Medal for The Crossover,  he got phone calls from several other Newbery Medalists: Katherine Paterson, Katherine Applegate, and Linda Sue Park, among others. All of them had the same advice: "Do not plan on writing any book during your 'Newbery Year.'"

Kwame in "beach wear" (All photos by Bruce Guthrie)

Kwame, however, is seemingly inexhaustible, and he was undeterred by this advice. Far from writing nothing, Kwame actually wrote three -- yes, count 'em, THREE -- books! And so it was that he came to my library recently to launch one of those three, a gem of a picture book titled Surf's Up!, illustrated by Daniel Miyares. Although it was a cold February evening Kwame was resplendent in a denim jacket, t-shirt, light pants and a cool pair of orange sneakers. He said his young daughter told him that he needed to dress in clothing appropriate for the beach, "since your book is about the beach."


In Surf's Up!, Kwame tells the story of two frogs named Bro and Dude who have a difference of opinion. Bro is desperate to head out on a nice day and catch some waves on his surfboard, while Dude wants to finish the exciting book he is reading before hitting the surf. As Dude gets deeper into his book, Bro gets swept up in the story, which adult readers may recognize as a riff on Moby Dick.  By the end, the two frogs have switched places, with Dude -- who has finished the book -- heading off with his surfboard and Bro curled up and reading.

Kwame wrote the text of Surf's Up! during a plane ride. "I thought it was perfect," he laughed, "and then I spent the next year re-writing it." Miyares is actually the third illustrator for the book. "The first two just couldn't get it right," Kwame said. "It is a tough book to illustrate because it's all dialogue." Miyares, however, really understood the ideas behind the text, Kwame said, and "he took all that and did something unique with the illustrations."

Kwame gets ready to read Surf's Up!

Surf's Up! has gotten several starred reviews, with Kirkus calling it "a warm-hearted tribute to reading," and Publisher's Weekly noting that the book is "a wild ride on the sea of imagination and a rousing high-five to the power of reading." But Kwame was dumbfounded by a question recently asked by a librarian about the book, which she had only heard about: "What color are the frogs?" It was the same question Kwame had been asked about the twin brothers who are the protagonists of The Crossover. In the case of the question about the frogs of Surf's Up!, Kwame said he responded that "your question is more intriguing than any answer I could ever give."

After telling this story, Kwame noted: "The problem is us, the adults -- not the kids. We're the ones who compartmentalize and treat people as 'the Other.'... I believe that we children's book authors, teachers, parents -- we need to help children imagine a better world, to plant the seeds of ideas in the minds of our children." If you've ever met or seen Kwame in action, you can envision his passion as he said those words. He's a truly dynamic speaker who feels it is his mission to inspire and empower children and teens through his books and appearances at schools and other organizations.

Kwame himself is one of four children who were raised by parents who were passionate readers. As he puts it: "Our house was a library and my Dad and Mom were verbal maniacs." Kwame recalled that he got in trouble at the age of two at preschool when, upset by a child who had knocked over his block tower, he spouted several lines of Fox In Socks. The teacher called Kwame's mother and told her: "Your son is arrogant -- he intimidates other children with his words." Kwame's mother responded by asking what book he had quoted.

Despite such a bookish upbringing -- or perhaps because of it -- Kwame fell out of love with reading for some time. But his literary love affair blossomed anew when he discovered poetry, specifically the poetry of Nikki Giovanni, who has said she taught him one thing: "The Answer is Yes." Kwame also found poetry a perfect way to woo the woman who became his wife, saying: "I ended up writing her a poem a day for a year so she would marry me. She did."

Kwame continued to write poetry and other types of creative writing over the years, even as he did other jobs, including teaching high school, producing jazz and book festivals, owning several publishing companies, and hosting a weekly radio. He's published nearly 20 books, including another picture book, Accoustic Rooster and His Barnyard Band. But it was The Crossover that has made him a star in the children's book world, and has given Kwame an international platform from which he can spread his special brand of dynamic inspiration. Written in free verse, The Crossover tells the story of twin middle school boys who are superb basketball players, thanks in large part to their basketball-obsessed father. The boys' close bond is tested when one of them falls in love, but the real worry is over their father's increasingly poor health. As Publishers Weekly noted: "This verse novel delivers a real emotional punch before the final buzzer."

Winning the Newbery also led directly to the second book that Kwame wrote last year. After winning the Newbery, Kwame had a meeting with Dick Robinson, the president of Scholastic, who asked Kwame: "What can we do for you?" Kwame, who had been trying for some time to make the materials he uses in his popular "Book-in-a-Day" programs at schools more readily available, realized that here was his opportunity. The result is Kwame Alexander's Page-to-Stage Writing Workshop: Awakening the Writer, Publisher and Presenter in Every K-8 Student, which will be published in March.  

Kwame shows a copy of Page-to-Stage

The third and final book that Kwame wrote during his Newbery year will be published in April. Titled Booked, it is, like The Crossover, a novel written in verse, and tells the story of a star soccer player named Nick whose father has written a dictionary and pushes reading on his son. But Nick is a daydreamer who is averse to reading until an injury sidelines him. In a starred review, Kirkus praised Booked for its "likable protagonist, great wordplay, solid teen and adult secondary characters and ... clear picture of the challenges young people face when self-identity clashes with parental expectations."

Kwame and fans with The Crossover and an advanced copy of Booked

Now that he's set a new standard for what can be done during a "Newbery Year," it's going to be interesting to see what Kwame will do next. But one thing is sure: Kwame will continue to work his magic to inspire young readers. As he put it at a recent appearance in Denver: "I'm the 'Say Yes Guy', the inspiration guy." And I say yes to that!

Kwame and I, with two of the books He wrote during his Newbery year.

End Notes: Thanks to Kwame for a truly inspiring evening! Thanks also to Heather Lennon of NorthSouth Books for the review copy of Surf's Up!. Thanks to Bruce Guthrie for taking such wonderful photos. And thanks, as always, to Kerri Poore and the other folks at Politics & Prose, Washington's great independent bookstore, for "booking" Kwame's event at my library.

Surprise & Delight at the Youth Media Awards

Today's Youth Media Awards were filled with high emotion, with the crowd of several hundred alternately gasping in surprise and/or roaring with delight. The awards also were history-making as, for the first time ever, graphic novels won a Newbery Honor (El Deafo, written and illustrated by Cece Bell) and a Caldecott Honor (This One Summer, illustrated by Jillian Tamaki and written by Mariko Tamaki). And the Caldecott Medal winner, The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend), was written and illustrated by Dan Santat who also is well known for his popular graphic novels.

Winner of the 2015 Caldecott Medal

This One Summer also won a Printz Honor (the Printz Award is given for books for readers ages 12-18 and is sometimes called the Newbery Medal for teens). But a graphic novel, American Born Chinese, written and illustrated by Gene Luen Yang, won the top Printz Award way back in 2007, so today wasn't a history-making moment for the Printz. Meanwhile, the 2008 Caldecott Medal winner, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, is considered a hybrid book, not a graphic novel, but it did feature a heavily-woven combination of illustrations and text.

Winner of the 2015 Newbery Medal

The current push for more diversity in children's and teen books, sparked by the We Need Diverse Books movement, also was reflected in today's winners. The Crossover, a novel in verse by Kwame Alexander, is the 2015 Newbery Medal winner. Alexander is the fourth African-American author to win the award, established in 1922. The three previous African-American winners were: Virginia Hamilton, for the 1975 Newbery Medal winning M.C. Higgins, the Great; Mildred Taylor, for the 1977 Newbery Medal book, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry; and Christopher Paul Curtis for the 2000 Newbery Medal winner, Bud, Not Buddy.

Brown Girl Dreaming, author Jacqueline Woodson's memoir in verse about growing up in the midst of the civil rights movement, won a 2015 Newbery Honor, as well as this year's  Coretta Scott King Author Award and a 2015 Robert Sibert Honor (the Sibert Medal and Honor books are focused on the best non-fiction books for kids). Brown Girl Dreaming also won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature back in November.

As Nina Lindsay points out in her Heavy Medal blog today, poetry also was a big winner in today's awards. Both The Crossover and Brown Girl Dreaming are written in verse, while author Marilyn Nelson uses 50 unrhymed sonnets to tell her story in How I Discovered Poetry. Two other books of poetry won awards: Josphine, a biography of entertainer Josephine Baker written by Patricia Hruby Powell and illustrated by Christian Robinson won both a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor and a Sibert Honor, while books by two poets were honored by the Pura Belpre Award committee. I Lived on Butterfly Hill, written by Marjorie Agosin won the Pura Belpre Author Award, while Portraits of Hispanic American Heroes by Juan Felipe Herrara was the lone Pura Belpre Author Honor book.

Woodson's book captured three awards today.

Several committees selected a large number of Honor books (each committee decides how many Honor books, if any, will be named). There were five Sibert Honor books: in addition to Brown Girl Dreaming and Josephine, Sibert Honor books included The Family Romanov by Candace Fleming; Neighborhood Sharks, written and illustrated by Katherine Roy, and Separate Is Never Equal: Sylvia Mendez & Her Family's Fight for Desegregation, written and illustrated by Duncan Tonatiuh.

But it was the six Caldecott Honor books that really produced a gasp, then a roar of approval, from the audience. Apparently there may have been other years where six Honor books were named (I'm still checking!), but it certainly isn't usual. Yet, 2014 was a banner year for picture books, and the crowd was clearly delighted that the committee's decision reflected this fact.

The first graphic novel to win a Caldecott Honor.

In addition to This One Summer, Caldecott Honor books included: Nana in the City, written and illustrated by Lauren Castillo; The Noisy Paint Box, illustrated by Mary GrandPre and written by Barb Rosenstock; Sam & Dave Dig a Hole, illustrated by 2013 Caldecott Medalist Jon Klassen and written by Mac Barnett; Viva Frida, written and illustrated by Yuyi Morales; and The Right Word: Roget and his Thesaurus, illustrated by Melissa Sweet and written by Jen Bryant. The Right Word also won the 2015 Sibert Medal, the second for Sweet, who won the 2012 Sibert Medal for Balloons Over Broadway, which she both wrote and illustrated. (Personal note: I served on the 2012 Sibert Committee).

The 2015 Caldecott Medal winner, The Adventures of Beekle, had been popular with some mocks, but wasn't widely considered a front runner. When it was announced as the winner, however, the audience cheered in approval as the Caldecott Committee members donned crowns, symbolic of the crown sported by Beekle.

As for how my library's Caldecott Club and Mock Caldecott picks measured up? Well, we got a few things right. Our own Mock Caldecott Honor Books included two of the actual 2015 Caldecott Honor Books, The Noisy Paint Box and The Right Word. But our top pick, The Farmer and the Clown, written and illustrated by Marla Frazee, surprisingly didn't win anything. It was a similar situation for our Caldecott Club. Our winner, Quest, written and illustrated by Aaron Becker, didn't win anything. But one of the Club's two Honor books, Sam & Dave Dig a Hole, won a 2015 Caldecott Honor.

The first graphic novel to win a Newbery Honor.

Meanwhile, the 2015 Newbery Committee, like the 2015 Caldecott Committee, also decided to include a graphic novel, El Deafo, as one of their Honor books. (Author/illustrator Cece Bell came to our library in November along with her husband, author/illustrator Tom Angleberger, and authors Jon Scieszka, Mac Barnett and Jory John). The Newbery Committee, sporting t-shirts that read "Trust the Process," named only two Honor books, to the evident disappointment of the audience, who clearly would have liked to have seen more Newbery Honor books.  Brown Girl Dreaming was the other Newbery Honor book.

And let me close this blog post with a shout-out to a long-time mentor of mine, Deb Taylor, who is the coordinator of School and Student Services at the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore. Deb was my young adult literature professor when I was working towards my master's in library science at the University of Maryland, and she and I also served on the 2012 Sibert Committee together. (She was chair of the 2015 Sibert Committee). Deb has mentored and inspired countless librarians, kids and parents, and I'm thrilled that she was chosen as this year's winner of the Coretta Scott King-Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement. Way to go, Deb!

Deb Taylor and I after she was honored today

PS If you, like me, can't get enough of these awards, check out this wonderful behind the scenes video of today's winners getting "The Call." Thanks to John Schumacher for spotlighting it on his blog, Watch. Connect Read.