Back in October I asked folks to predict the winners of yesterday’s ALA Youth Awards. Admittedly, I only asked about the Newbery, Caldecott, and Printz awards, and I can happily say I went two for three, nailing the Caldecott and Newbery winners; I was off the mark on the Printz.

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead was the odds-on favorite to win, and Newbery fans were not disappointed. The honors were an eclectic bunch: history, historical fiction and a Chinese folktale, all with a broad range of reader appeal. I was thrilled for Grace Lin (click here to read about the event we had with her in November) for Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, a small gem of a book.

Interestingly, not one person from our Mock Awards picked the Printz winner, Going Bovine by Libba Bray, which I really enjoyed. I must say, while I’m happy with the honors and the winner, I’m a little stunned that Laurie Halse Anderson’s stunning novel Wintergirls didn’t even get an honor. That book just blew me away and will continue to be one of my all-time favorites. As with the Newbery, I think the Printz list is broad and appealing and offers a lot to most teen readers.

The Caldecott was thrilling for me. At BEA in May, I had the distinct pleasure of being seated next to Jerry Pinkney at a dinner. I wrote about it, and predicted his book as the winner way back in June. He was a delightful dinner companion, and then at dessert when Little, Brown brought out F&Gs of The Lion & the Mouse, I was awed. Since the book came out, I have been handselling it happily to the masses. All the World by Liz Garton Scanlon was also a favorite with a great message that speaks to all ages with Marla Frazee’s fantastic art. Red Sings from Rooftops illustrated by Pamela Zagarenski, written by Joyce Sidman, was a Flying Pig favorite this fall.

One last thing I must comment is how many Vermont authors and illustrators won awards, and how proud was I? First Bonnie Christensen wins the Schneider Family Award for picture books for her stunning book Django: World’s Greatest Jazz Guitarist. Then Julia Alvarez wins the Pura Belpré Author Award for Return to Sender. And if that weren’t enough awards for the smallest state in the union, well, we got to add one more winner: Tanya Lee Stone (who lives one town north of the store, how cool is that?) won the Sibert Award for her Almost Astronauts: 13 Women Who Dared to Dream.

While my ALA webcast never did work, lots of folks were tweeting, so I felt like I was there live. The excitement surrounding the awards is always fantastic fun. This year I had more relationship with potential winners than ever before, so it was very exciting. Colleagues won and lost, and I spent the entire awards on the edge of my couch, whooping it up in my living room, while quietly eyeing my growing stack of galleys for 2010, wondering which one of these I would be rooting for next year.

Sure, you’re accustomed to promoting books in tune with Presidents’ Day (Feb. 15th this year), and National Poetry Month in April. But when was the last time you tied titles to National Bird-Feeding Month (January) or brought out your manners-themed stock for International Civility Month (May)? 

With the help of Chase’s Calendar of Events and the McGraw-Hill website, I’ve included a few "Special Month" designations below that seemed like they might lend themselves to some unique and/or entertaining in-store displays, library events, and/or publisher/author marketing opportunities. You should read over the complete list of 2010 Special Months yourselves, though, to see if others strike your fancy. National Return Shopping Carts to the Supermarket Month (February), perhaps?

If you want ideas for week-long celebrations and noteworthy days, take a look at the listings on BrownieLocks. 

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January is National Hot Tea Month

January is Oatmeal Month (Promote your Goldilocks books here.)

January is National Bird-Feeding Month

January is International Creativity Month

January is Get Organized Month

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February is Black History Month

February is Library Lovers’ Month

February is Spunky Old Broads Month (I think a great event series could be tied to this one!)

February is National Weddings Month

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March is Women’s History Month

March is National Craft Month

March is Expanding Girls’ Horizons in Science and Engineering Month

March is National March into Literacy Month

March is Music in Our Schools Month

March is National Peanut Month

March is National Umbrella Month

March is Youth Art Month

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April is National Poetry Month

April is National Card and Letter Writing Month (No, this one wasn’t coined by Hallmark. It was the U.S.P.S. who started this written correspondance initiative.)

April is International Customer Loyalty Month

April is National Humor Month

April is Jazz Appreciation Month

April is National Kite Month

April is Physical Wellness Month

April is School Library Media Month

April is Straw Hat Month (I love picturing the covers of the books on this display…)

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May is National Barbecue Month

May is International Civility Month

May is National Egg Month (Hold onto some of those books from your Easter display in April!)

May is Get Caught Reading Month

May is Gifts from the Garden Month

May is National Moving Month

May is National Salad Month

May is Teen Self-Esteem Month (Think of all the YA novels that would be a good fit here…)

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June is National Candy Month

June is National GLBT Book Month

June is Great Outdoors Month

June is Dairy Month

June is National Rivers Month

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July is National Blueberries Month (Blueberries for Sal goes here.)

July is Family Reunion Month

July is National Hot Dog Month (I see lots of dachshund books…)

July is National Ice Cream Month

July is International Zine Month

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August is Audio Appreciation Month

August is Get Ready for Kindergarten Month

August is National Inventors’ Month

August is National What Will Be Your Legacy? Month (put Miss Rumphius on display)

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September is Be Kind to Writers and Editors Month

September is National Chicken Month

September is National Coupon Month

September is Library Card Sign-Up Month

September is National Piano Month

September is Shameless Promotion Month (I can already see the mailings I’ll be receiving: "In honor of Shameless Promotion Month I am writing to shamelessly promote X…")

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October is National Bake and Decorate Month

October is Children’s Magazine Month

October is Eat Better, Eat Together Month

October is National Go on a Field Trip Month

October is Photographer Appreciation Month

October is National Reading Group Month

October is National Squirrel Awareness Month (We have done squirrel-specific displays in the past but were’t aware we could be increasing people’s "Squirrel Awareness" in the process… Must make a new sign for that display.)

October is National Vegetarian Month

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November is National Adoption Month

November is Family Stories Month

November is National Inspirational Role Models Month

November is National Lifewriting Month

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December is National Tie Month

December is National Spiritual Literacy Month

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Do you have a favorite odd or lesser-known occasion you like to celebrate or promote in your store/library/home/office? If so, please share it with the rest of us so that we can celebrate too!

As the American Library Association’s Youth Media Awards announcements zoom ever closer — Monday, January 18! — we in the children’s literature field are speculating, buzzing, debating the relative merits of our own favorites, and predicting those we think might carry away the gold and silver. (Scroll down to see all the ALA medals and descriptions of what types of literary excellence they reward.)

Does it matter which books win? You bet.  An informative article by Elizabeth Cosgriff in Open Spaces Quarterly Magazine lays out some of the information about how the big awards, especially the Newbery, do not offer monetary prizes as such but reap rich rewards for their authors, whose award book sales increase exponentially and whose award-winning books’ shelf lives improve considerably. (She mentions the grim statistic that the average in-print life of a children’s book is 18 months.) A Newbery or Caldecott award can take a quiet book and catapult its sales into the tens, even hundreds +, of thousands of copies. (I’d be interested to know what effect the Honor medal has on sales.) Authors who win the major awards are also hot tickets on the paid speaking circuit—often a writer’s bread and butter.

In December and January, libraries and schools all across the country hold Mock Newbery, Caldecott, and Printz discussions in anticipation of announcement Monday, declaring their own winners. It’s fascinating to see which books rise again and again to the top of the lists, and which dark horses emerge as surprise contenders.

We’d love to hear from groups who have held mock award discussions. Which books won? Which books did you lobby hard for that didn’t make it? What are you hoping to hear on Monday?

Although most people are aware of three or four of the major awards, the ALA actually offers 16 different youth media awards (15 if you don’t count the Alex Awards, which are given to adult books with crossover teen appeal). Since some awards have higher profiles than others, I thought I’d list the ALA Youth Media Awards that will be announced on Monday morning, along with the ALA’s description of each award. Click on any award name to visit the ALA’s web pages for each award’s history and a complete listing of past winners.

Complete List of ALA Youth Media Awards:

Alex Awards—The Alex Awards are given to 10 books written for adults that have special appeal to young adults, ages 12 through 18. The winning titles are selected from the previous year’s published books.

Mildred L. Batchelder Award—This award, established in Mildred L. Batchelder’s honor in 1966, is a citation awarded to an American publisher for a children’s book considered to be the most outstanding of those books originally published in a foreign language in a foreign country, and subsequently translated into English and published in the United States.

Pura Belpré Award—The Pura Belpré Award, established in 1996, is presented to a Latino/Latina writer and illustrator whose work best portrays, affirms, and celebrates the Latino cultural experience in an outstanding work of literature for children and youth.

Randolph Caldecott Medal—The Caldecott Medal was named in honor of 19th-century English illustrator Randolph Caldecott. It is awarded annually by the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the ALA, to the artist of the most distinguished American picture book for children.

Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Children’s Video—The Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Children’s Video honors outstanding video productions for children released during the previous year. The annual award is given to the video’s producer by ALSC, through a Carnegie endowment.

Margaret A. Edwards Award—The Margaret A. Edwards Award, established in 1988, honors an author, as well as a specific body of his or her work, that have been popular over a period of time. It recognizes an author’s work in helping adolescents become aware of themselves and addressing questions about their role and importance in relationships, society, and in the world.

Theodor Seuss Geisel Award—The Theodor Seuss Geisel Award, established in 2004, is given annually (beginning in 2006) to the author(s) and illustrator(s) of the most distinguished contribution to the body of American children’s literature known as beginning reader books published in the United States during the preceding year.

Coretta Scott King Book Awards—Designed to commemorate the life and works of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and to honor Mrs. Coretta Scott King for her courage and determination to continue the work for peace, the Coretta Scott King Book Awards annually recognize outstanding books for young adults and children by African-American authors and illustrators that reflect the African-American experience. Further, the Award encourages the artistic expression of the black experience via literature and the graphic arts in biographical, social, and historical treatments by African-American authors and illustrators.

Coretta Scott King John Steptoe Award for New Talent—The award is established to affirm new talent and to offer visibility to excellence in writing and/or illustration which otherwise might be formally unacknowledged within a given year within the structure of the two awards given annually by the Coretta Scott King Task Force. These books affirm new talent and offer visibility to excellence in writing or illustration at the beginning of a career as a published book creator.

William C. Morris Debut YA Award—The William C. Morris YA Debut Award, first given in 2009, honors a debut book published by a first-time author writing for teens and celebrates impressive new voices in young adult literature.

John Newbery Medal—The Newbery Medal is awarded annually by the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association, to the author of the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children.

Odyssey Award for Excellence in Audiobook Production This annual award will be given to the producer of the best audiobook produced for children and/or young adults, available in English in the United States.

Michael L. Printz Award—The Michael L. Printz Award is an award for a book that exemplifies literary excellence in young adult literature. The Printz Award has been honoring the best in young adult literature since 2000.

Schneider Family Book Award—The Schneider Family Book Awards honor an author or illustrator for a book that embodies an artistic expression of the disability experience for child and adolescent audiences.

Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal—The Sibert Award honors the most distinguished informational book published in English in the preceding year for its significant contribution to children’s literature.

Laura Ingalls Wilder Award—This biennial award, a bronze medal, honors an author or illustrator whose books, published in the United States, have made, over a period of years, a substantial and lasting contribution to literature for children.

YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults. Newly established, 2010 is the first year of this award. The award will honor the best nonfiction book published for young adults (ages 12-18) during a November 1 – October 31 publishing year. The award winner will be announced annually at the ALA Midwinter Meeting Youth Media Awards, with a shortlist of up to five titles named the first week of December. The award will be presented at ALA Annual Conference. (Thanks to Jeanette Larson for alerting me to this new award! It hadn’t yet made the ALA’s main youth awards page. SO glad to see fine nonfiction getting more recognition!)

The Coretta Scott King – Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement This award was established to recognize an African American author, illustrator, or author/illustrator for a body of his or her published books for children and/or young adults who has made a significant and lasting literary contribution. The Award pays tribute to the late Virginia Hamilton and the qualit
y and magnitude of her exemplary contributions through her literature and advocacy for children and youth, especially in her focus on African American life, history and consciousness. The first award will be given in 2010. (Thank you to VirginiaHamilton.com, the source of the beautiful photo at right.)

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Aren’t the medals beautiful? It’s lovely to see them all in one place.

To reiterate: we’d love to hear from groups who have held mock award discussions. Which books won? Which books did you lobby hard for that didn’t make it? What are you hoping to hear on Monday?

Credit or debit? How many times a day do we ask and answer this question? If you’re a bookstore employee and you’re not asking this question, you should be.

I think most of us know, it’s cheaper to ring up sales as debit cards, but do we know why? Well, yes and no. Yes, because you can see the savings when you look at your bank’s monthly merchant service statement.  And, no, because sometimes those statements are very hard (deliberately, I feel) to decipher. If you want to understand more how complicated the Visa and Mastercard fee structure works, read the following article from the New York Times. 

Businesses don’t necessarily need a separate keypad for an additional monthly fee, they can just turn the machine around and have the customer punch in their PIN on that. Ours is actually fun to use because the cord isn’t long enough so folks have to get right next to it, but nobody minds. For most customers it’s cheaper to use their card as a debit, too. So it’s a win-win for everyone.

By having customers input their PIN number at the register, I save a lot of money. Here’s the breakdown with Visa and Mastercard: rung as credit cards. my discount is 2.04%; with those same cards rung up as debit cards, the discount falls to 1.690%. It may not sound like much, but for every $100 I ring up as debit I save .35 cents. That’s a savings of $3.50 per thousand. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but do the math at your store, and you’ll be shocked how much you can save. This is just the discount savings. Every card comes with its own special fee structure, and again, any card used as a debit saves more, every time. At mininum it’s ten cents per debit saved, sometimes the savings is as high as fifty cents, per transaction. The saving potential is truly staggering.

Not sure what to do? Have a review with your credit card processor, and go over your statement, line by line, with someone from the bank so you really understand it. Ask what the savings would be if you added the PIN input option. They give you a real estimate, based on your past history, what savings you might reap by using debit cards all the time. Update your equipment. Talk to your bank about lowering your fees. If you don’t already have your credit cards processed through the ABA, I urge you to check out this service. It’s amazingly low cost, and in 13 years, I haven’t paid for one roll of paper or shipping on that paper. 

Every once in a while, I’m going to present small things a bookstore owner or manager can do to save money this year. Together, by cutting costs here and there, I hope we’ll all make a little, maybe a lot, extra money at the end of the year.

Is your store doing anything different this year to save money? Please share!

Would you like a bag? It’s a simple question. One that I must ask countless times a day. Maybe it’s because I live in Vermont and we’re supposed to be eco-friendly up here, so folks seem to take an inordinately long time to answer the question. I can see their thought process: I shouldn’t get a bag, it’s wasteful. I only have two books, I can just carry them out and put them in the car. My car’s a wreck. But it’s a nice bag, and it’s recycled paper. I shouldn’t get a bag. Oh, but I’d re-use this one. I can recycle this one. And on and on it goes. In the meantime I have customers in line waiting to get rung up who know how they feel about bags.

The bag issue is starting to loom large at our store. We are currently out of most of our bags and are deciding what/if to reorder. Yes, all of our bags are made from recycled paper with a minimum 30-40% post consumer content, so I feel good about that. But does every purchase automatically warrant the offering of a bag? Invariably, when I neglect to offer a bag, they want one, and when I do offer a bag, more and more, an Envirosax or some similar folds-up-to-nothing-bag that holds 100 pounds gets flung out of purse in a strident flourish, making me feel foolish for even offering. Sometimes, I can see someone really struggling about the bag issue. I tell them, "It’s okay to want a bag, really, it is." Bag guilt shouldn’t happen.

The great thing about bags is they are advertising for your store. Ours is a destination store in a tiny downtown (two streets). The parading of our name about town is minimal, so we don’t get a ton of pop from folks seeing the bag. What does provide great advertising are our lovely canvas tote bags with our logos. Again, these are eco-friendly, made from recycled cotton with soy-based ink from a women-owned company in New Hampshire. These totes show up everywhere. We’ve had folks send of pictures of their bag (similiar to what kids do with Flat Stanleys) from Russia, Greece, and South Africia. My painfully shy mom uses her in Connecticut and regularly gets stopped by another shopper wanting to discuss the Flying Pig.

We give our tote bags away as a premium. You spend $75 at once, you get a free tote. We buy in bulk, so it’s not expensive for us to do that and people will often spend up to $75 just to get the tote, so this works. I see them every day at the market, which pleases me everytime.

So, back to the bag discussion. We must continue to offer bags, obviously. Just as we’ve done recently with our gift wrap, we’ll keep making it as green as possible and only hope that folks have made their bag decisions before they come to the front of the line. And if they take one of our bags, at least they can feel good about it.

The publishing world is changing these days, and until last week I was not particularly saddened or enraged by job cuts until my Simon & Schuster rep, Katie McGarry, was among the several field reps who were let go last week in favor of a telephone sales force.

What I can say is how much I enjoyed working with Katie over the past decade. Katie’s humor and smarts made meetings with her a joy. In the last few years we’d taken to having breakfast at Shelburne Farms talking about ourselves and a little bit about publishing. After breakfast we’d take our coffee to Adirondack chairs overlooking Lake Champlain and go through the samples and the catalogs. It was heavenly. Honestly, if you want me to buy more of your books, feed me a little first,  and tell me what you love from your catalog.

Katie knew her books. Even when S&S restructured her job a few years and she did adult books as well, she hit the ground running and could speak conversantly about the entire list. And let me tell you, an S&S list is possibly the largest list out there — the kids’ catalog alone usually hits 300 pages. She took her time to get to know our store and what we stocked, so a 300-page catalog involved a lot of skips. There was never pressure to buy books. I would often buy books on the strength of her saying she loved it. Her descriptions of books were to the point, and she let me read the F&G’s without talking about what happened to the duck. She had her own opinions about the books and that was refreshing. She would always let me raid the back of her car for galleys. She never got mad when I lost my catalogs. She loved our dogs and they loved her (this can’t be said for everyone). I always felt like Katie was working for me, not the other way around. She finessed the system when trying to get us authors for events. 

Last year, S&S restructured again and Katie’s territory changed. She called to say that she would no longer be our rep and I got choked up. I felt the loss of Katie immediately; I knew I had not only lost a great rep, but no longer would we have an excuse to have those wonderful breakfasts. Katie is just a lovely person, whose meetings I looked forward to, whose funny stories I loved hearing and would often repeat, who happened to just love books. She would handsell her catalog the way we handsell books in the store.

Katie is a great rep, and some smart publishing company, which realizes the value of two people sitting down face to face, should snap her up in a heartbeat, and make sure her territory includes Shelburne, Vermont. 

Last week when we asked readers to share their Reading Resolutions, did you include plans to return your library books on time OR record more of the books you’ve read? If so (or if not), feast your eyes on this handy and inexpensive ($4) tool for logging one’s borrowing and/or reading!

My favorite guilty pleasure blog, Design Sponge, recently featured the Overdue Book Calendar available from Etsy seller Aunt June (a.k.a. Lauren Hunt), and I was charmed, charmed, charmed by this clever creation! Each month of the calendar features drawings of 13-15 books with blank spines, on which you can record the titles of your library books and their due dates. OR (this is what I’m thinking…) you could use the calendar as a simplified reading log. Instead of recording books you borrow, record the books you’ve read, and the date when you did so. If you write small enough, you could even record a short review beneath or alongside the book’s title information. That way at the end of 2010, you’ll have a wonderful visual reminder of all the books you read this year! (Or, if 13-15 spines per month won’t cut it for you, you’ll at least have a decent sampling.)

For $4, Aunt June will e-mail you a PDF of the calendar. You can print out as many 8.5 x 11 copies as you’d like on your home computer or get your calendar(s) printed at a local copy shop.

What a great New Year’s gift for all of your reader friends!

It happens to all of us who order books — we make mistakes, sometimes huge mistakes. Sometimes publishers make mistakes and send vast quantities more than you ordered.

So, as we enter a new decade, I’m curious what has been your worst ordering nightmare?

In a fit of "they’ll run out of it" frenzy, I somehow ordered eight cartons of Annie Leibovitz’s A Photographer’s Life several Christmases ago. While I absolutely adore this lovely, important book, it was $100 and each copy weighed 7.5 pounds. When I stacked my cartons, now magically in stock everywhere, I feared the floor would buckle. I still have some copies because it’s just too expensive to return.

Elizabeth ordered eight sets of the entire Little House on the Prairie series with the black and white illustrations several years ago when it was rumored they were going out of print because the covers were redone. While we love the color illustrations, there is something lovely about the original. Of course, the books never went out of print (the redone covers with photographs of real kids was the version that went out of print) and we had more than enough Little House to keep us stocked for quite a while.

I usually find full-sized wrap to be too long for wrapping a book efficiently, so I generally have my gift wrap rolls cut in half. Feeling smug with my frugality, I ordered a new wrap without checking its size first, and asked for the ream to be cut in half. Well, when the wrap arrived it was teeny tiny. It’s so narrow we can only use it for mass market titles; it’s fairly useless, but it’s pretty.

So, please, one and all, share your ordering mis-ship nightmares, over orders, or other stock miscues.

As I get ready to head back to work next week, I’ve made some resolutions for the store. There’s nothing like really going over the previous year’s numbers to make me realize that some things need to be run a little differently.

– First and foremost, order more from the publishers. I know it’s so easy to get seduced by the distributors and their overnight service, but the discount loss cannot be underestimated in this economy. It’s easy to see, when really looking at the cost of goods sold, that the profit margin for publisher orders is just better, often 4-6% more, and that can really add up. This requires planning ahead a little more and being a lot more organized, and honestly, that can only be a good thing.

– Have more events. Again, a lot of the books on our year-end bestseller list were ones from events, even events that weren’t very well attended. The sell-through on event books after the event continues to thrill me. This year we’re already planning more authorless events that will bring customers to the store while simultaneously creating something fun for the community.

– Beef up the Vermont section. Regional non-fiction books did astoundingly well this year. Admittedly, we had some great local books come out this year, but in general this section always does well.

– I hear every bookseller say this when I talk with colleagues, but claiming co-op needs to be more of a priority. It’s essentially free money just sitting there, waiting for me to ask for it, and ask for it I will. And the more direct orders I make with the publishers, the more co-op I’ll have.

– I need to not wear so many hats. This is the year where I’m really going to try to delegate more. I don’t need to be the one who orders all the books for events. Someone on staff can take responsibility for that and I won’t have to worry about it so much. And I bet there will be fewer moments of "Uh-oh! We don’t have books and the event is next week."

– Make sure to take one full day off a week, every week.

– Lastly, try to re-read this list monthly, so I don’t lose my focus.

I’d be curious what other booksellers have resolved to do differently in 2010, and what you hope the change will bring.

The bright-burning torch of the national ambassador for young people’s literature has been passed: from the estimable and mischievous Jon Sciezcka to the estimable and mischievous Katherine Paterson, and we couldn’t be more delighted with both parties.

Motoko Rich of the New York Times has written a lovely article about Ms. Paterson, and I don’t want to repeat what has been said there. But I would like to say congratulations and thank you to both ambassadors. The multi-award-winning Mr. Scieszka has been a joyful and lively helmsman at the wheel of national awareness of and appreciation for children’s books (you didn’t realize that the "National Awareness of, & etc." is a ship, did you?). He has made something real, vital, and valuable out of what could have been a merely ornamental role.

To declare Ms. Paterson an ambassador for children’s literature is, of course, a redundancy. She participates in several international conferences on behalf of children’s literature, literacy, and peace. She has won countless awards for her individual works of fiction, and no fewer than 23 awards for her entire body of work, including the prestigious international Hans Christian Andersen Medal for Writing, and Sweden’s Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. The Boston and New York Public Libraries deemed her a Literary Light and a Library Lion, respectively, and she was even declared a Living Legend by the Library of Congress in 2000.

You’d think a person might rest on her laurels after all that, but no: Ms. Paterson has also been on the board of the National Children’s Book and Literacy Alliance since its founding and has served as its Vice President. She continues to travel widely, speaking and listening, writing and advising, learning and teaching.

In short, she is not only a brilliant, wise, and funny writer, but a tireless advocate for children around the globe. She’s also an exceptionally inspiring speaker. Not too shabby. She would be an utterly daunting role model, except that she won’t stand still long enough to be put on a pedestal, and wouldn’t stay there if you succeeded. There couldn’t be a better person to represent children’s books and the interests and concerns of both children and the people who write and create art for them.

I hope you’ll all add your cheers, anecdotes about Jon S or Katherine P, and/or any hopes for what might be achieved in children’s literature over the next few years. Oh, and Happy New Year!!

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Many thanks to the photographers: Photo of Jon Scieszka with his ambassador’s medallion by Michaela McNicholy. Photo of Katherine Paterson in Sweden by Helene Komlos Grill. Living Legend medal image found here.