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While you’re gearing up for ALA Midwinter — in Boston! Home of The Horn Book! Come say hi at our booth! — you can enjoy the complete 2015 Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards speeches. Click on the tags BGHB15 and HBAS15 for timelines, pictures, and more. Photos, judges’ intros, and other information can be found in the January/February 2016 Horn Book Magazine. And as a bonus, we’re including Susan Cooper’s wonderful Horn Book at Simmons Keynote on the theme Transformations: “The World That Changes.”

Fiction Award Winner
Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms by Katherine Rundell

Fiction Honor Books

• Egg & Spoon by Gregory Maguire
• Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman, illus. by Brendan Shusterman

Nonfiction Award Winner
The Family Romanov: Murder, Rebellion, & the Fall of Imperial Russia by Candace Fleming

Nonfiction Honor Books

• Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson
• The Boys Who Challenged Hitler: Knud Pedersen and the Churchill Club by Phillip Hoose

Picture Book Award Winner
The Farmer and the Clown by Marla Frazee

Picture Book Honor Books

• It’s Only Stanley by Jon Agee
• Once Upon an Alphabet by Oliver Jeffers

The post 2015 Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards Speeches appeared first on The Horn Book.

Thank you so much. Thank you to the judges — Barbara, Jessica, and Maeve. Thank you for placing me in the company of two of my very favorite picture book creators, Jon Agee and Oliver Jeffers.

By giving this award to The Farmer and the Clown, you have helped move the needle a little bit on issues of cultural diversity. Clowns have been marginalized for far too long. Hated even.

Farmers, too, for that matter.

If this award can help us embrace a world in which farmers and clowns can co-exist without everyone getting all riled up, then that is just incredible.

*   *   *

I have always loved the time between when I finish a book and when it gets the first review. I can relax into knowing that I made a book and I gave it everything I had. I get to clean my studio with a sense of accomplishment. The book exists outside of me, but it’s not yet public.

Then the reviews arrive, and they usher in a whole new phase. I learn a lot about what exactly I made from the reviews. Maybe the takeaway is different than what I thought it would be. Maybe a larger theme had escaped me. Maybe the dogs I drew actually look like cats.

Then the book goes out and lives its life. Booksellers, teachers, librarians, and parents find it — hopefully. Children, the intended audience, hopefully do, too. This is the point, after all, and it is always profound.

After going through this process with twenty-seven books, I’ve learned to manage the highs and lows pretty well. But with The Farmer and the Clown, I found there was a whole new phase to navigate. The book became fodder for some very bizarre discussions on social media. This wasn’t the usual zaniness of Amazon reviews gone off the rails, but respected names in our field giving voice to unsubstantiated opinions of others. No one took ownership.

A lot of what was said I won’t dignify. It was beneath us.

But some things that were said are important to talk about because they’re issues at the heart of our collective work. One is the opinion, often delivered as fact, that wordless books are harder for illustrators to do than books with words. I’m not sure where this idea began, but it seems to have taken root — so much so that discussions and reviews about wordless books often begin with the assumption that it was an extraordinary leap for the illustrator.

For me, finding the right balance between the words and pictures in Liz Garton Scanlon’s evocative — and not at all narrative — All the World text was every bit as challenging as this wordless book I made. After months of working on All the World, I had to start all over again and go all the way back to thumbnail sketches. Turned out that my picture-story was strong-arming the text by forcing narrative connections between the characters. I had eclipsed the larger theme of expansiveness.

Illustrating the folk song “Hush Little Baby” was challenging, too. I wanted the picture-story to have the same rollicking spirit as Pete Seeger’s banjo in his rendition of the lullaby, so I visualized the pictures as galloping alongside the words. Sometimes they were in tandem, sometimes they crossed paths, sometimes they veered far away from each other. Making sure words and pictures don’t stomp all over each other is maybe even harder than concentrating on one or the other by itself.

I also read that because The Farmer and the Clown was wordless, I ceded a greater degree of control over the narrative to the reader. I disagree. I didn’t surrender control. That gives the visual narrative no respect. And it assumes the words deliver the clearer story. But words can be equally misinterpreted.

For instance, my ex-husband’s Midwestern family uses the word squeeze as a euphemism for going to the bathroom. Imagine what he thought was happening in the story when he heard these words read to him as a child: “Peter, who was very naughty, ran straight away to Mr. McGregor’s garden, and squeezed under the gate!”

Anyone can bring their own crap to words or pictures. That’s something authors and illustrators have little control over.

But a picture-story has an advantage over a word-story, and that is that children are experts at reading pictures. Because of this, a visual narrative actually surrenders less control over the narrative to the child. Children bring a clear-eyed, intense, lingering, unsentimental, and sophisticated focus to reading pictures. They can read them in a literal, metaphorical, or ironic sense, depending on what’s called for, and they can tell what’s called for. They are a highly discerning audience to draw pictures for. Because children are seeing clearly what meets their eye, they don’t assume (the way grownups might) that there is something beyond what they are seeing.

Contrast that with how most grownups experience the pictures. If they give even a passing glance to the pictures as something more than decoration, they often tend to read into them. Insert their own story or experience. Presume stuff that isn’t there. Gloss over what is.

Of course I’m not saying all grownups do this. Although I do think that when words and pictures are competing for the grownups’ attention, words tend to win. But children focus on the pictures because they can’t read words yet or can’t read them easily. And so they study those pictures for meaning in a way that adults don’t have to anymore.

*    *    *

Before I settle into my studio in the morning, I often hike in the mountains above Pasadena with my dog. There are rivers to cross (or there were before the drought). The way a child reads pictures in a picture book is the same way you get across the water. Rock to rock. If you are a child who can’t yet read, your eyes will land on the pictures the way your foot lands on a rock. One picture to the next to the next.

If illustrators don’t provide enough landings, if we don’t plan them out carefully, we will strand that child in the middle of the river. But if we do it well, we will bring the child all the way across. Some pictures are resting places; some are quick, light hops; some are tippy on purpose; some are functional bridges. Add the magical page-turn, the rhythm of the words, a lap or story circle, and we’ve got the picture book—a form that has stolen our hearts.

I have learned about this form from many teachers, beginning with The Horn Book Magazine. I’ve read (and saved) every issue since I graduated from Art Center College of Design in 1981. It’s been my master’s program. For thirty-four years. Thank god the tuition is reasonable — and a write-off.

My first editor, Linda Zuckerman, told me that my commercial illustration portfolio wasn’t narrative enough for children’s books. She explained this many times, in many ways, over many years. It took me so long to get it.

Allyn Johnston caught me up after Linda left the field and has hung in there with me the whole time since. Allyn’s intuition about picture books, how they must deliver emotion and crack the reader open in one way or another, has been the guiding principle of the many books we’ve made together.

My agent, Steve Malk, with his bookseller background and sharp eye for craft, has represented me for fifteen years. He was twenty-three when I first met him and already had much to teach me. I am really proud to be in the group of writers and illustrators he works with.

*    *    *

The idea for The Farmer and the Clown came to me around the same time that my marriage of thirty-one years was coming apart.

The book is about two characters who look a certain way on the outside but are actually a whole other way on the inside. As the idea developed and the book took form, my personal life went through a complete upheaval. Many of us will fall off our train at some point in our lives, and I fell off mine during the time I worked on this book. Hard landing, unforgiving landscape. One day I was tough as the farmer. The next, lost as the clown. Some days I benefited from the kindness of strangers so surprising in their tenderness. And every single day, in ways large and small, I was enveloped by the open arms of my family, a crazy clown troupe if there ever was one.

But while I was working on the book, I wasn’t making these connections at all. In fact, Allyn sent a text to me one day as I was putting the finishing touches on the last painting. It said: “Home. You know where it is when you’re there. But sometimes you get a bit separated from home, and you may need a little help finding your way back.”

I couldn’t imagine what she was talking about. Was she lost? Was I? It took me a long time to figure out she was proposing Farmer and the Clown flap copy. I had no idea that was what the book was about.

Then, after I cleaned my studio, and after the reviews, and after the social media circus, I started to hear from readers.

I got an email that said:

I read it with my four-year-old daughter, and the phone rang with an important call that I’d been expecting, so I handed the open book to her and told her I’d be right back. While I was gone, she finished reading it. When I hung up the phone, I turned around and there she was. “Mommy. The clown’s family came back.” “Is that so? And he went with them then?” “Yes, but first he gave the farmer a giant hug. A GIANT one. And then the farmer whispered ‘I love you’ into his ear. And you know the funniest thing? The farmer doesn’t even know that a monkey is following him home right this minute.”

And another:

I read the book to my three-year-old granddaughter. When we were finished reading, I asked her what she was thinking. “I’m thinking that the clown and the farmer will always remember each other.” I agreed that they would because of all the great moments they’d shared. Her comment started a conversation about the people in our lives who’ve left us something, tangible or intangible. My granddaughter has already lost several people that she loves and we had a chance to remember the things they’ve left behind so that we’re able to remember them.

This is truly an upside of online communication — people have shared many touching stories about The Farmer and the Clown with me. About how children, even as young as two, suddenly had a way to talk about love and loss and grief and saying goodbye and keeping remembrances of people they were missing who had meant a lot to them.

This is why I continue to have the utmost respect for children’s ability to read pictures in a way that far surpasses our own. I remember very well the feeling I had as a child that the illustrations were speaking directly to me in a secret, private language. No grownup needed to explain it. No grownup needed to interpret it. It was simply there for me, for the taking.

Thank you for honoring this book with this award.

From the January/February 2016 issue of The Horn Book Magazine. For more on the 2015 Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards, click on the tag BGHB15.

The post The Farmer and the Clown: Marla Frazee’s 2015 BGBH PB Award Speech appeared first on The Horn Book.

It was with surprise and gratitude that I heard about receiving a Boston Globe–Horn Book honor award. This book was a risk, in that it’s an alphabet book which is a bit over the heads of the people who are most likely to be reading an alphabet book. Instead it’s a book that’s just about the joy of using language and wordplay, with some of the randomness of the workings of my brain thrown in. (It’s also a book for those too embarrassed and too far gone to admit they never learned their ABCs…I know who you are!)

It was a risk to publish a 112-page picture book that was mostly black and white, effectively a collection of short stories that are convoluted and weird…but a risk that was worth it. It is a book I am deeply proud of. Thank you to the judges and to all of the people who were prepared to go down this strange road with me. Without you, we may never have had an Owl and Octopus Problem Solving Agency, a parsnip with identity issues, or the invention of a jelly door—and I for one believe the world is a better place with them in it. Somewhat…

From the January/February 2016 issue of The Horn Book Magazine. For more on the 2015 Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards, click on the tag BGHB15.

The post Once Upon an Alphabet: Oliver Jeffers’s 2015 BGHB PB Honor Speech appeared first on The Horn Book.

Thank you to The Horn Book and the Boston Globe. And to Lauri Hornik and Lily Malcom, my wonderful publisher and art director. And congratulations to Marla and Oliver. (Great choices, judges.)

A few words about It’s Only Stanley:

This is a love story. There’s a lot of love in this book — blind, delusional, human love along with deep, primordial, canine passion.

It’s the story of the Wimbledon family — dog-owners — who, like many of us, treat their beloved Stanley as if he’s a human being. I’m guilty of this. I have a little, fluffy dog, and it rarely occurs to me that she’s actually descended from a wolf — until I try and take away her bully stick.

The Wimbledons, though — they’re exceptional. They have such boundless respect for their beagle that even when they’re jarred out of bed in the middle of the night, and find him stringing up wires, tubes, and pipes through the floors and ceilings, creating smoke and foul smells and general wreckage, they simply can’t believe he’s doing anything but routine repairs on the house.

And why is Stanley so busy? Well, he’s in love. And in order to fulfill this urge, he needs to fly to the moon using the Wimbledons’ conveniently-shaped house as a rocket ship.

It’s Only Stanley began as more of a mystery. In the early versions, the story simply ended with Stanley on his way to the moon. My editor lingered on that ending:

“Jon, could there be something on the moon that a dog might like?”

“A chew toy?”

“No, Jon. Something a dog might really be attracted to?”

Editors can be like psychologists, gently leading you to your own conclusions. Or, as on that day, they can blurt out:

“What if, on the moon, Stanley meets another dog?!”

Ah! It was the missing piece. This “other dog” became a pink, lunar poodle, and It’s Only Stanley became a genuine love story.

In fact, if the story had a message, it might be: “Love will find a way.” But it could also be: “Beagles who wear tool-belts should never be trusted.”

From the January/February 2016 issue of The Horn Book Magazine. For more on the 2015 Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards, click on the tag BGHB15.

The post It’s Only Stanley: Jon Agee’s 2015 BGHB PB Honor Speech appeared first on The Horn Book.

What a joy it is to celebrate with you, to laugh and talk, to make new friends and embrace old ones. Thank you to the Boston Globe–Horn Book judges for honoring this complicated, often dark tale from history. What a remarkable gift you have given me. As always, I am deeply grateful to my Random House family — Barbara Marcus, Lee Wade, Ann Kelley, Rachael Cole, Stephanie Pitts, Adrienne Waintraub, Laura Antonacci, Lisa Nadel, and last, but never least, the exceptionally wise, talented, and invincible Anne Schwartz. Thank you for your willingness to take risks on behalf of my obsessions. Thank you for always making me so much better.

Finally…I have to thank my mother. Back in 1967, the Book of the Month Club mailed her a copy of Robert K. Massie’s Nicholas and Alexandra. She didn’t want it, but she’d neglected to decline the title in advance. And so she crammed it — unread and unpaid for — onto our already groaning bookshelves.

Because of my mother’s carelessness, I am standing here tonight.

I found that ill-gotten book on our shelves just after my thirteenth birthday. I wasn’t interested in Russian history. I was simply bored, and at loose ends, and the book looked very adult, like it might have some racy parts in it. I tucked it under my arm and headed for my room.

“You’re not going to like that,” my mother called after me. “I’ve heard it’s pretty dense.”

She was right about one thing — at six hundred–plus pages, it was dense. But even though it didn’t have any naughty scenes, I loved it. I was swept away by the beautiful, ill-fated family, by the romance and splendor of that bygone era. Looking back, I think I must have skipped the parts about war and revolution; how everyday Russians suffered and died under Nicholas’s policies. Or maybe I chose not to believe them. For me, the Romanovs were, as Alexandra herself liked to say, “all roses and sweet kisses.”

They lived that way in my imagination — roses and kisses — for the next four decades. Then something happened. I began visiting middle schools where I talked about my passion for history, and how writing biography allows me to indulge my curiosity.

“Who from history piques your curiosity?” I asked at the end of each presentation. “Who do you long to know more about?”

Time and again, a student — usually a girl — raised her hand. “Anastasia,” she’d answer.

I wasn’t surprised. I, too, believed in the bittersweet magic of Anastasia’s story — the rich, spirited princess who should have lived happily-ever-after but who was unable to escape her fate. Doomed, her bloodline cursed, hers was a fairy tale turned to tragedy.

Hmm, I thought, this could make a wonderful small book.

And so I launched into creating a pleasant, breezy biography focused on Nicholas’s youngest daughter and propelled by luxurious palaces and endearing, little-known facts. What was Anastasia’s favorite toy? A one-armed, one-eyed doll named Vera. What was her favorite treat? Pickled reindeer tongue.

I stuck close to the main character, confining the story within an Imperial bubble. Just as Nicholas and Alexandra insulated their children from the larger world, I protected my readers from the darkness gathering on Russia’s horizon. I spared them the reasons for peasant and worker discontent; kept at bay the miseries of World War I. Like Anastasia, my readers only occasionally peeked through the distorted surface of that bubble. What they saw remained hazy and nebulous, mere hints at the events sweeping down on the family.

As for Anastasia’s tragic end…well, I decided to avoid the entire incident. Why distress my reader with the violent, messy truth? Instead, I ended my first draft this way: “Three hours later Anastasia and her family awoke to a nightmare.”

That’s it.

No gun smoke–filled cellar.

No bullets, or jewels hidden in camisoles.

No death.

I sent this first attempt to Anne Schwartz.

One of the things I admire most about Anne is her honesty. I can always rely on her to tell it like it is.

“Boring,” she said.

And when I thought about her comment — after I’d finished plotting her demise and pulling out my hair — I knew she was right.

The story I’d sent her was predigested. It lacked depth. It avoided controversy. Yes, every word was fact, but I hadn’t told the truth.

Facts simply are. They can’t be questioned or disputed, at least not reasonably. Anastasia was the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II. She was born in June. She did wear white lace dresses.

The truth is what we make of those facts; what they show us; what they teach us.

Stating facts is easy.

But telling the truth? It means piecing together the threads of humanity that join the past to the present, that make us one people even across centuries.

It means taking what is unfamiliar or difficult to grasp — like turn-of-the-twentieth-century Russia — and making it commonplace for twenty-first-century readers.

It means finding human themes in narratives, and writing stories — honest stories — from those themes: loss, grief, loneliness, joy, anger, love.

Above all, it means searching for something greater; telling a true story that not only connects with readers but also strives to say something about the way we live today.

What is Anastasia’s story about? I asked myself. Truthfully about.

It’s not merely the story of a pampered princess whose life comes to a bad end.

It’s about a princess’s way of life that comes to an end because something had gone terribly wrong. Something I’d chosen to ignore. What forces were at work? What personalities? And was there really nothing Nicholas or Alexandra could have done to change their fate?

I pawed through my research. I had six pages of facts about Fabergé eggs; twenty-six more devoted entirely to descriptions of the Winter Palace; twelve detailing Anastasia’s elaborate baptismal ceremony.

Karl Marx, on the other hand, didn’t rate a single note. Neither did the voices of Russian peasants or workers. Lenin got just three mentions. World War I got ten.

I had work to do.

I would have to go deep — deeper than facts about reindeer tongue or white-lace dresses. I would have to dig in the rubble of well-known history for stories that had gone untold, voices that had gone unheard. Peasants and factory workers. Shop girls and soldiers. Priests, office workers, and cleaning women. They were part of the truth, too. So were the Romanovs’ guards. So was their firing squad.

I didn’t figure all this out overnight, and I didn’t figure it out by myself. Rather, it was a process of thinking and rethinking, writing and rewriting, questioning and questioning and questioning again. Anastasia faded into the background. Other lives moved to the forefront. At times I was resistant to the material. Did I really have to delve into Nicholas’s anti-Semitism? Did I really have to explore Alexandra’s radical Orthodoxy? Did I really have to describe the deaths of those beautiful children?

I did.

In the end, The Family Romanov may not satisfy those middle-school students’ curiosity in the ways they’d anticipated. It’s not a royal fairy tale, and it certainly isn’t all “roses and sweet kisses.” There’s not even a single mention of Fabergé eggs. But it’s the truth, or at least what I made of it based on the facts and my interpretation of them. It answers my questions.

What is the Romanovs’ story truthfully about?

It’s about what happens when a government does not respond to the needs of its people, when faith supersedes fact and ninety percent of a country’s wealth is held by 1.5 percent of the population.

After the book was published, I heard from lots of people telling me they’d gained a new perspective from reading it. I also heard from people who did not like my version of the truth. “You ruined the Romanovs for me,” wrote one young woman.

I can commiserate. Writing The Family Romanov sort of ruined them for me, too. But it taught me that lives are always more complex, more tangled, than the myths and fairy tales that arise from what we want them to be. In the end, it taught me that there is a difference between fact and truth. And to write a credible and compelling story, you need both.

From the January/February 2016 issue of The Horn Book Magazine. For more on the 2015 Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards, click on the tag BGHB15.

The post The Family Romanov: Author Candace Fleming’s 2015 BGHB NF Award Speech appeared first on The Horn Book.

Hey Everybody. I want to thank the committee for choosing Brown Girl Dreaming as a Boston Globe–Horn Book honor book. It wasn’t an easy book to write — I know no book is easy — but Brown Girl Dreaming took me on a writing journey like no other. And while I’m grateful for that journey, I am glad to have that book in print — and out of me.

Imagine a very long labor without any drugs. Then imagine the euphoria that follows. The book in the world and having its life is that euphoria — and winning this award is a part of that.

From the January/February 2016 issue of The Horn Book Magazine. For more on the 2015 Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards, click on the tag BGHB15.

The post Brown Girl Dreaming: Author Jacqueline Woodson’s 2015 BGHB NF Honor Speech appeared first on The Horn Book.

In recent years I’ve endeavored to give young readers real-life protagonists their own age. I want my readers to ask themselves, “What would I have done?” I believe that teens experience sharper pangs of injustice than adults, and a greater determination to do something about it. Some, such as Claudette Colvin, have acted with amazing courage. As Dr. King said of the civil rights movement, “The blanket of fear was lifted by Negro youth.”

The Boys Who Challenged Hitler is the story of a group of Danish middle-school students who were passionately ashamed of their government for bowing to the German forces that invaded their country on April 9, 1940. Rather than kneel to the enemy, these schoolboys vowed to “clean the mud off the Danish flag.” They formed a sabotage cell called the Churchill Club and taught themselves, on the job, how to trouble the German army. After a six-month spree during which their activities escalated from vandalism to the theft of high-powered weapons to the grenade bombing of German vehicles, they were captured. Word of their arrest raced through the country. There was great concern that the boys would be executed. Their courage shamed and inspired Danish citizenry to stand up against their occupiers.

After the arrest, the great Danish poet and playwright Kaj Munk expressed the national mood in a letter to the parents of ringleader Knud Pedersen and his brother Jens: “Of course what [the boys] have done is wrong; but it is not nearly so wrong as when the government gave the country away to the invading enemy…I pray to God to give them cheerfulness, endurance, and constancy in the good cause.”

I met Knud Pedersen in Copenhagen in 2012. He was eighty-six. In the previous seventy years there had been film nibbles and book offers to tell the story of the Churchill Club, but nothing had panned out. Knud knew that my interest probably represented his last chance to tell the story right, and he took full advantage of it. I interviewed him for a solid week, which led to hundreds of follow-up emails and, ultimately, the book you have honored here.

I think this story is especially important. The Churchill Club boys, some of whom had yet to shave, took on a hopelessly big Goliath. They had no military training and had not been desensitized to violence and killing, as are soldiers in basic training. In shrill voices the boys debated the ethics of taking lives. Was it ever right? When? Who decides?

As Anne Whaling, children’s book buyer at Mrs. Dalloway’s Bookstore in Berkeley, California, has commented, “The book raises lots of thought-provoking questions, as the best books always do: When do you stand up, even fight, for what is right? How would you do it? How far would you go? And, in today’s world, where is the line drawn between political activist, vandal, and terrorist?”

From the January/February 2016 issue of The Horn Book Magazine. For more on the 2015 Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards, click on the tag BGHB15.

The post The Boys Who Challenged Hitler: Author Phillip Hoose’s 2015 BGHB NF Honor Speech appeared first on The Horn Book.

Imperial Russia is the new vampires.

And then there’s this:

And, okay, yes, it’s way-post-Imperial, but also this:

Dasvidaniya, Edward. Privet, Dmiti.

For more 2015 Boston Globe-Horn Book and Horn Book at Simmons: Transformations, click on the tag hbook.com/bghb15.

The post Trend takeaway from 2015 BGHB/HBAS: Transformations appeared first on The Horn Book.

I want to thank the Horn Book, Simmons College, and Boston Globe staff who worked so hard to make this year’s Boston Globe–Horn Book Awards and Horn Book at Simmons Colloquium: “Transformations” a big success. You can see a photo album of the events on our website, and look forward to the January/February 2016 issue of the Horn Book Magazine for coverage of the weekend (including, for the many who have asked, Susan Cooper’s inspiring keynote speech). Next year marks the fiftieth anniversary of BGHB and we are planning for a big celebration!

Roger Sutton
Editor in Chief

The post From the Editor — October 2015 appeared first on The Horn Book.

As many of you know, the Horn Book at Simmons Colloquium: “Transformations” was this past Saturday. It was interesting, engaging, educational, and fun (it was also exhausting for those of us working it, and even more so for the amazing Katrina Hedeen, who planned the whole durn thing).

But what you don’t know is the most important thing that happened over our BGHB/HBAS weekend.

Was it the Shuster-men speaking eloquently about Challenger Deep and mental illness?

Was it the informative and funny editor panel?

How about getting to see Marla Frazee’s pre-book sketches (including the illustrated thank-you note that became A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever!)?

No!

What was it?

Susan Cooper took a picture of my Dark Is Rising tattoo.

(SQUEE)

 

The post Siân Has the Best Weekend Ever! appeared first on The Horn Book.

Roger Sutton and the Horn Book at Simmons editors panel. Photo: Shoshana Flax.

On Saturday, October 3rd, we held our fifth annual Horn Book at Simmons Colloquium, with the theme “Transformations.” Miss the fun? We’ve compiled a timeline of the day’s highlights based on tweets by our staff and other attendees. See Friday’s ceremony timeline here.

9:07 am: Good morning! We’re ready for a full day of great discussion about good children’s books!

9:10 am: Cathie Mercier: It’s easy to read what we know and like, but how do we push ourselves to read outside ourselves, read “otherways”?

9:14 am: @jescaron: @RogerReads and Cathie Mercier open #HBAS15 with words of wisdom and “grounding”

9:15 am: @RogerReads introducing keynote speaker Susan Cooper

9:19 am: Susan: Transformation in nature is generally cyclical. What about change in our minds? Imagination doesn’t follow any rules

9:20 am: @jescaron: Susan: “Change is an integral part of stories — it is called plot.”

9:21 am: Susan: Can words spark an unpredictable change in the mind?

9:22 am: @ShoshanaFlax: SC clearly read the May @HornBook carefully #swoon

9:24 am: Susan discussing different types of book transformations: retellings, adaptations from other media, making books more accessible

9:26 am: Susan: Fantasy is metaphor… It takes you through the imagination to truth

9:27 am: @jescaron: “People who write fantasy have chosen transformation…finding the magic from the real”

9:30 am: A tumultuous year in Susan’s personal life had profound effects on her writing. “As with writers, so with readers” — we seek escape in words

9:31 am: Susan: When reading, your imagination lives in the book. Reading is creating experience from imagination

9:32 am: Susan: This experience of living in a book can change you

9:33 am: Susan: Letters from readers say, “I read your book, and my world changed a little,” even if readers can’t articulate exactly how

9:35 am: Susan: “The imagination of a reader instinctively takes what it needs from a book and creates a kind of life belt”

9:38 am: Susan: You realize which books had a profound effect on your childhood imagination only by looking back

9:40 am: Susan: An imagination that delights in books as a child grows up and is able to nurture a hunger for books in the next generation

9:43 am: Which books were transformative for Susan in childhood? The Box of Delights and The Midnight Folk by John Masefield

9:44 am: Susan: Nonfiction can be transformative too: “a story is a story”

10:02 am: Nonfiction winner Candace Fleming and editor Anne Schwartz on “Bringing History to the Page”

10:03 am: Candace echoing Jacqueline Woodson’s metaphor of writing as childbirth: you forget how miserable it is and then you’re ready to do it again

10:04 am: Candace writes in longhand on loose-leaf paper — the smell of the ink is reassuring, reminds her of what she’s accomplishing

10:05 am: @jescaron: The Family Romanov went from a light and fluffy book to its final state — transformation!

10:06 am: Anne: As an editor it’s very difficult to ask an author to start over; both author and editor have already invested a lot of work

10:08 am: Fascinating to see original drafts, notes, and editorial letters for what became The Family Romanov

10:11 am: Anne liked the format of text snippets and sidebars, creating a narrative like a tapestry

10:15 am: Anne asked questions Candace “never saw coming,” which made her think about her research and narrative in different ways

10:18 am: Candace: “Anne is the best editor because she questions everything–and that makes me a much better writer”

10:21 am: Going to Russia helped Candace really understand the disparity between the Romanovs and the peasants whose “backs the palaces were built on”

10:23 am: Candace: Stories of peasant lives in Imperial Russia and the Russian Revolution are extremely difficult to find

10:28 am: Candace: Writing good nonfiction requires finding the “vital idea” you want to communicate, not just the facts

10:51 am: An Amazon reviewer called Candace a “vile socialist” for her portrayal of the Romanovs. She’s proud

11:06 am: Judge Maeve Visser Knoth in conversation with #bghb15 honoree Jon Agee about It’s Only Stanley in “How Do I Make You Laugh, Too?”

11:07 am: Stanley, like all of Jon’s books, started as a doodle in a notebook. If one of Jon’s doodles makes him laugh, he tries to follow that idea and flesh it out

11:10 am: Jon: Writing a picture book is “like fishing” — you start with an idea and “see if you can bring this fish in”

11:13 am: Jon says developing the plot of his picture books comes from a series of “what if” questions

11:14 am: Jon discussing how page-turns work with punchlines

11:18 am: Jon: “Sometimes when you’re working on a picture book, it’s like the story is already there” and you’re excavating it

11:27 am: Lear’s limericks made a big impression on Jon. They were about grown-ups, but grown-ups who were doing ridiculous things

1:08 pm: Great breakout sessions all around! Now @RogerReads is going to moderate editor panel “It’s a Manuscript Until I Say It’s a Book” #HBAS15

1:13 pm: Each editor is sharing a story of the “editorial magic” that helped turn the author’s manuscript into a #BGHB15-winning book

1:19 pm: Editor Liz Bicknell: “Editing is a backstage job. I wear black and sit in the curtains.”

1:20 pm: @maryj59: Liz: “Every writer demands different things of an editor.”

1:25 pm: Rosemary Brosnan: As an editor, “I like to feel that if I’ve done my job well, no one knows I exist”

1:39 pm: Nancy Paulsen: Editing is about “finding the writing that sings to you” as an individual reader — it might not be for everybody

1:34 pm: @jescaron: Editors muse on advice to younger selves — Don’t be so rash

1:36 pm: @jescaron: Editors muse on advice to younger selves — Try to get a good picture of the marketplace

1:38 pm: @jescaron: Editors muse on advice to younger selves — Have confidence that you will eventually figure it out

1:39 pm: @jescaron: Editors muse on advice to younger selves — Don’t stay out so late

1:40 pm: @ShoshanaFlax: @nancyrosep & @lizbicknell1 both cite editor’s role to stand in for readers

1:52 pm: Nancy: “We all have the same goal…to make the best book possible.” Rosemary: “Sometimes we have to remind the author of that!”

1:44 pm: @maryj59: Rosemary: “An idea is just an idea. It’s the execution that matters.”

2:06 pm: Gregory Maguire in conversation with #BGHB15 judge Jessica Tackett MacDonald about Egg & Spoon in “Bringing Baba Yaga Home”

2:10 pm: Gregory: A story can have any number of inspirations. It’s not a one-to-one ratio

2:16 pm: Gregory discovered different roles for Baba Yaga in Russian folktales: the scary witch, the kindly crone… “That made her human”

2:17 pm: Gregory: “I had to get out of Baba Yaga’s way… It sometimes felt like channeling the devil”

2:20 pm: A theme of Egg & Spoon is “What can we little ones do” in the face of problems? What we older ones can do is give little ones courage

2:21 pm: Gregory: “I don’t write [specifically] for adults or for kids. I write for people who like to read Gregory Maguire books”

2:23 pm: Gregory quoting Katherine Paterson: “The consolation of the imagination is not imaginary consolation”

2:17 pm: @deirdrea: Gregory on why he loves Baba Yaga: “What we look like and what people think we are is NOT who we are.”

2:26 pm: Gregory showing us inspirational objects — including a tiny Baba Yaga house — he kept on his desk while writing Egg & Spoon

2:30 pm: @RogerReads asks, Are today’s readers well-versed enough in fairy tales & folklore to know the references Gregory is asking them to engage with?

2:32 pm: Gregory Maguire: Maybe Egg & Spoon is a reader’s first introduction to Baba Yaga, but he hopes it won’t be their last introduction

2:37 pm: @RogerReads has nothing to do with the BGHB judges’ choices, but “the happiest news I got this year was the announcement that The Farmer and the Clown won BGHB Picture Book Award”

2:40 pm: Marla Frazee & editor Allyn Johnston discussing The Farmer and the Clown in “Do I Need Words with That?”

2:41 pm: Love seeing Marla and Allyn’s work spaces — and the real-life boys (their sons!) — from A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever!

2:46 pm: A Couple of Boys… started as an illustrated thank-you note from Marla, James, and Eamon to Allyn’s parents for the boys’ nature camp trip

2:54 pm: Original title: “A Couple of Boys Go to Nature Camp (Sort Of)”

3:02 pm: Whoa, neither Marla nor Allyn had done a wordless book before The Farmer and the Clown!

3:07 pm: Marla: Part of The Farmer and the Clown illustration process was soaking the art in the bathtub between pencil and color!

3:19 pm: Really interesting backstory for Marla’s upcoming book with Victoria Chang, Is Mommy?

3:26 pm: #BGHB15 committee chair Barbara Scotto speaking with Neal and Brendan Shusterman about Challenger Deep in “When Life Provides the Story”

3:30 pm: Barbara: Did writing Challenger Deep change the meaning of the experience of facing mental illness for Neal and Brendan?

3:32 pm: Neal’s own tumultuous emotions — deep depression followed by euphoria — during a hospitalization for a blood disorder contributed to the novel as well

3:34 pm: Brendan: Mental illness is something we need to talk about. It’s easy to feel that you’re alone

3:37 pm: It was important to Neal to show Caden’s strength in facing and managing his illness, despite fact that it will never go away entirely

3:38 pm: Brendan’s original art is all in color; helped him to express what he was feeling during an episode. There’s a huge volume not included in Challenger Deep

3:39 pm: Much of the narrative of Challenger Deep was inspired by Neal’s interpretations of Brendan’s art

3:42 pm: Neal: the changes made to the manuscript in the editing process were small but extremely precise

3:46 pm: Neal: “When I submitted this manuscript, I was terrified…I had no idea if it even worked…As a writer you always need to be on that edge”

3:50 pm:@RogerReads asks, What was it was like for Neal when his fictional story started to diverge from Brendan’s real experience?

3:51 pm: Neal: it was easiest to write the pieces that did diverge, challenging to dovetail the 2 so readers wouldn’t be able to tell the difference

3:56 pm: Neal: “I look back at my body of work, and I feel that I everything I have written helped me to write this book”

4:01 pm: Cathie Mercier of @SimmonsCollege wisely and wittily recapping our day. How does she do that?!

4:03 pm: Cathie: “The writer lives two lives: the life lived, and the life unfolding on the page. The reader lives those dual lives too”

4:13 pm: Cathie: Who are the readers we leave behind? What are the topics we avoid due to discomfort? How can we transform literature itself?

4:14 pm: Cathie: Will we be able to transform ourselves to join young readers in the reading future?

4:15 pm: Thanks so much for a fantastic weekend at #BGHB15 and #HBAS15! See you next year!

More on the Boston Globe–Horn Book Awards and the following day’s Horn Book at Simmons Colloquium, “Mind the Gaps: Books for All Young Readers,” is coming soon! Follow us on Twitter for updates on all things Horn Book.

The post 2015 Horn Book at Simmons Colloquium timeline appeared first on The Horn Book.

The winners and honorees. Photo: Aram Boghosian.

Did you miss the Boston Globe–Horn Book Awards on Friday, October 2nd? Just want to relive the excitement of the ceremony? We’ve compiled a timeline of the evening’s highlights based on tweets by our staff and other attendees. See Saturday’s Horn Book at Simmons Colloquium timeline here.

5:43 pm: @jescaron: The crowd is gathering! Everyone ready for the ’15 @HornBook and @BostonGlobe Awards!

5:45 pm @Reflectlibrary: #HBAS15…I’m all a twitter!!

5:47 pm: Here we go… Cathie Mercier opening the #BGHB15 Awards ceremony!

5:51 pm: More opening remarks from the @BostonGlobe’s Linda Pizzuti Henry and @RogerReads of @HornBook. So much history with these three Boston institutions!

5:54 pm: @RogerReads: The BGHB Awards have only one central criterion: to honor excellence in books for children

5:56 pm: Chair Barbara Scotto will present the awards for fiction

5:58 pm: Gregory Maguire now accepting for Fiction Honor Book Egg & Spoon

6:00 pm: Gregory Maguire: “Baba Yaga c’est moi” — he most identifies with this madcap character

6:01 pm: @lauragmullen: Gregory Maguire accepts Boston Globe Horn Book Honor for Egg & Spoon and has room in stitches

6:02 pm: Gregory Maguire: We inherit a world of great beauty and great sorrow… We share both

6:03 pm: @SussingOutBooks: Gregory Maguire: “There are some things that are not diminished in being shared, but increased”

6:04 pm: Neal and Brendan Shusterman now accepting for Fiction Honor Book Challenger Deep

6:05 pm: Neal Shusterman: Challenger Deep began as just a title… What would “the deepest place on earth” mean in fiction?

6:06 pm: @ShoshanaFlax: Love that #BGHB15 award presentations include editors’ names #creditwhereit’sdue

6:07 pm: @lauragmullen: @NealShusterman “My editors taught me to write.” Delighted to learn from him at #BGHB15

6:08 pm: The Shusterman family’s experience with schizo-affective disorder provided a glimpse into that emotional “deepest place on earth”

6:09 pm: @jescaron: Challenger Deep — the story of a young adult struggling with mental illness and emerging from the deep

6:10 pm: @SussingOutBooks: “When I first turned in Challenger Deep, I had no idea how it would be received.” @NealShusterman, we are so glad you told THIS story

6:11 pm: Katherine Rundell’s editor David Gale accepting on her behalf for #BGHB15 Fiction Winner Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms

6:12 pm: Katherine Rundell is often asked, “Why children’s books? Why not ‘proper’ adult books?” Because children are extraordinary readers

6:13 pm: @MrsVanDusen223: Katherine Rundell: When you write you build a house. When kids read they build a castle

6:14 pm: Katherine Rundell: “I come back to children’s books because children’s books were there for me when I needed them most”

6:16 pm: Katherine Rundell: Books “helped me up and led me home” when lost. Children’s books say, “hope counts…love will matter”

6:18 pm: Katherine Rundell: “I asked [ed.] David Gale to read this out. I am making him thank himself. Which is a particular pleasure because he is so brilliant and modest”

6:20 pm: @jescaron: “Children’s books are not an way back out but a way in… they were not a crutch, they were wings”

6:21 pm: Judge Jessica Tackett MacDonald presenting Nonfiction Awards

6:23 pm: Editor Wesley Adams accepting on behalf of Phillip Hoose for Nonfiction Honor Book The Boys Who Challenged Hitler

6:25 pm: Phillip Hoose: Knud Petersen knew this book was his last chance to tell the story of The Churchill Club right

6:28 pm: Editor Nancy Paulsen accepting on Jacqueline Woodson’s behalf for Nonfiction Honor Book Brown Girl Dreaming

6:29 pm: @lauragmullen: @nancyrosep accepts #BGHB15 award on behalf of @JackieWoodson. What a team!!

6:30 pm: “Brown Girl Dreaming was not an easy book to write. I am glad to have that book in print — and out of me. Imagine a very long labor with no drugs”

6:31 pm: @SussingOutBooks: There were 32 drafts of Brown Girl Dreaming… @JackieWoodson @nancyrosep SO WORTH IT. Thank you for sharing your world with us

6:32 pm: Jacqueline Woodson: The post-labor euphoria of writing is having the book in print with a life of its own

6:33 pm: Candace Fleming accepting for #BGHB15 Nonfiction Award winner The Family Romanov

6:34 pm: @lauragmullen: She makes history have a heartbeat. The amazing @candacemfleming accepts her award for The Family Romanov

6:35 pm: Candace Fleming: The adult book Nicholas & Alexandra was (unwanted) book club selection of her mother’s, Candace’s first introduction to the Romanovs

6:36 pm: @jescaron: The Romanovs “were all roses and sweet kisses,” at least in Fleming’s memory

6:37 pm: Candace Fleming: The first drafts focused on Anastasia’s glamorous life with few hints of the sweeping events overtaking Russia

6:38 pm: Initially Candace Fleming avoided any mention of the Romanovs’ tragic end. The draft was factual, but not the truth

6:41 pm: Candace Fleming realized “I had work to do” when looking at her copious notes on the Romanovs’ riches but few on the lives of peasants

6:42 pm: Candace Fleming: “There is a difference between fact and truth, and to write a credible story—a compelling story—you need both”

6:43 pm: Judge Maeve Visser Knoth presenting award and honors for Picture Books

6:44 pm: Jon Agee accepting #BGHB15 Picture Book Honor for It’s Only Stanley

6:45 pm: Jon Agee: “It’s Only Stanley is a love story. There’s a lot of love in this book” although much of it is delusional, irrational love

6:46 pm: Jon Agee: there’s the canine love and then there’s the Wimbledon family’s love and trust for Stanley

6:47 pm: @jescaron: A book with a pink lunar poodle? Count me in! #ItsOnlyStanley

6:49 pm: Carmela Iaria accepting on behalf of Oliver Jeffers for #BGHB15 Picture Book Honor for Once Upon an Alphabet

6:51 pm: Oliver Jeffers: It was a risk to publish this weird, 112-page alphabet book, but worth it. Thank you to those who came on this strange journey

6:53 pm: Marla Frazee accepting #BGHB15 PB Award for The Farmer and the Clown. She’s glad to be in company of two of her favorite PB creators, Jon Agee and Oliver Jeffers

6:55 pm: Marla Frazee was baffled and troubled by conversations on social media around The Farmer and the Clown

6:56 pm: Marla Frazee: “Making sure words and pictures don’t stomp all over each other is maybe harder than focusing on one or the other”

6:57 pm: @jescaron: “Words and pictures can be equally misinterpreted”

6:58 pm: Marla Frazee: Saying that wordless books cede control to the reader is saying that the visual narrative provides a less powerful story

6:59 pm: Marla Frazee: Children are better at reading visual narratives than grown-ups are

7:01 pm: Because young children can’t yet read or read well, they rely on the visual narrative to guide them from emotion to emotion in a picture book

7:02 pm: Marla Frazee: The @HornBook has been a master’s class in children’s books for her since she graduated art school… 33 years! ♥

7:04 pm: Marla Frazee has taken heart in readers’ responses to The Farmer and the Clown — particularly very small children’s responses

7:05 pm: Marla Frazee: wordless books speak directly, secretly to children — no adult mediator necessary

7:06 pm: @RogerReads turning us loose to mingle, get books signed, and ooh and ahh over the winners

7:07 pm: See you tomorrow for #HBAS15 — lots more to come!

7:11 pm: @EmilyProcknal: Congratulations to all the 2015 @BostonGlobe – @HornBook Award honorees and winners. What an incredible evening at @SimmonsCollege

11:59 pm: @Wozleigh: Worth long drive for #HBAS15 tomorrow with @RogerReads, @NealShusterman, @candacemfleming, @nancyrosep, Liz Bicknell, Gregory Maguire, and SUSAN COOPER!

More coverage of the 2015 Boston Globe–Horn Book Awards and the following day’s Horn Book at Simmons Colloquium, “Transformations,” is on the way! In the meantime, follow us on Twitter for updates on all things Horn Book.

The post 2015 BGHB ceremony timeline appeared first on The Horn Book.

Today we’re honoring our BGHB Fiction Award winners! Read reviews of all of the 2015 fiction winners here; see below for more web extras to celebrate them. Join us on October 2–3, 2015, for the Horn Book at Simmons Colloquium: Transformations, featuring several 2015 Boston Globe–Horn Book award recipients.

The 2015 Boston Globe–Horn Book Fiction Award winner is Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms by Katherine Rundell (Simon and Schuster).

• Read like the Obamas: Books the First Family bought

Egg & Spoon by Gregory Maguire (Candlewick) received a BGHB Fiction Honor.

• “Hijacking the Pumpkin Coach” (from the May/June 2015 special Transformations issue)
• Unexpected intertexuality: Reading Egg & Spoon alongside The Family Romanov

Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman and illustrated by Brendan Shusterman (Harper/HarperTeen) received a BGHB Fiction Honor.

• 2005 BGHB Fiction Award acceptance speech for The Schwa Was Here
• Five questions for Neal Shusterman

Stay tuned for web extras on our nonfiction winner and honorees tomorrow!

The post 2015 BGHB Fiction Day appeared first on The Horn Book.