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There comes a time in every woman’s life when she is asked to interview a childhood idol.

Put another way . . .

There comes a time in my life, say every half a year or so, when I am asked to interview one of my own childhood idols.  Most recently, that someone was Carle Honors honoree Chris Van Allsburg.  You may know Mr. Allsburg from such books as Jumanji, Polar Express, The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, etc.  For me, my favorite Van Allsburg’s include The Stranger (a perfect book for this time of year, don’t you think?), Bad Day at Riverbend, and most recently Queen of the Falls.  The prospect of interviewing him at the Honors was daunting, to say the least, but I have a marvelous ability to turn off the muscle inhibiting awe-factor in my brain, so I was confident that I could do this thing.  Semi-confident at the very least.

Photo by Johnny Wolf

The Carle Honors, just to clarify, are a yearly fundraiser for The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art.  Now in their Eighth year, the honorees for 2013 included such luminaries as the aforementioned Mr. Van Allsburg (Artist), Lynda Johnson Robb and Carol H. Rasco of Reading is Fundamental (Angel), Phyllis Fogelman Baker (Mentor), and Barbara Bader (Bridge).  If you able to go you are privy to a wonderful array of tiny food, magnificent company, and lots of lovely pieces of art that you could bid on if you happened to have a spare $2000 or so burning a hole in your pocket.  My fantasy art piece that I would bid on if I suddenly won the lottery was a Jon Klassen piece featuring a sheep.  It was a very Klassen-esque sheep.  A dry, witty baa baa that would have made an excellent gift for my mother.  Ah well.  Next time.

Mr. Van Allsburg was not around when I arrived so I busied myself with small talk and some very successful attempts to cram large quantities of tiny food into my gaping maw.  This plan, naturally, had to reach a conclusion when Mr. Van Allsburg entered the room.  I was a bit too intimidated to accost.  Fortunately someone else was perfectly happy to accost at will, and before we knew it we were seated at a small table with my audio recorder sitting between us.  Here is what transpired.  I will take pains to cut out all the times I had to politely refuse the tiny food offered to me by passing waiters.  Apparently I’d set a precedent for myself that evening.  They weren’t about to leave me alone without a fight.

Betsy: Well, first of all thank you so much for meeting with me.  I’m a huge huge fan.  I love The Stranger.  If anybody has a one Chris Van Allsburg book that they choose, The Stranger would actually be mine. Particularly at this time of year it’s my favorite book.

Chris Van Allsburg: Where did you grow up?

BB: I grew up in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

CVA: Oh.  Not far from where I grew up.

BB: Where’d you grow up?

CVA: Grand Rapids.

BB: Oh!  Yeah, just around the corner.

CVA: That book usually finds more interest with those who grew up in the northern latitudes.  Because down south the myth of Jack Frost doesn’t exist.  They don’t know who he is.  Never heard of him.

BB: If you’re going to have that picture of him clasping his hand to his head holding a leaf they’re going to say, “And that means what exactly?”

Now these days it looks like they’re rereleasing your books.  I just got in The Wreck of the Zephyr.

CVA: Well they aren’t rereleasing them because fortunately I have not had a single title go OP [out-of-print].

BB: You’ve never had a single title?  Really?

Photo by Johnny Wolf

CVA: No, they’ve all just chugged along, year after year.  So the new edition is not bringing it back into print.  It’s a digital reproduction.  So the quality of the pictures is much better because when it was first reproduced it was old analog stuff and it never looked that good to me. The color fidelity is better and it’s sharper.  And there’s just things you can go in and do to fix it that you can’t do the old way.

BB: Now the covers, are they original covers that you’ve made or have they been taken from the book in some way?

CVA: In the case of Jumanji, that originally had a jacket that was an interior image, and so is the new one.  It’s just a different image and it’s bled, which is kind of a less traditional way to jacket a book.  I always had very old-fashioned ideas about taking a picture, putting a little white line around it and then putting a colored frame around it.

BB: The Polar Express . . .

CVA: Oh no, almost all my books were like that.  The Widow’s Broom is actually different.  But, for the most part, the jacket was laid out a lot like the inside with the addition of a little color.  But these new jackets that they’ve placed on The Polar Express. . . . well that didn’t go bleed but Jumanji looks a little more modern and same with The Wreck of the Zephyr.

BB: Are there plans to do it for other titles in the series?

CVA: Well, I don’t know. It is hard to justify because there is some expense going back and doing all the production.  And the rational, or at least, the sort of excuse for doing it. . . these last two books, Jumanji and The Wreck and the Zephyr, it’s because of their longevity.  They’ve been in print that long and so they had birthdays.

BB:  Now are they making a new Jumanji movie?  There was a rumor about that at one point.

CVA: Well, they actually did make what I thought of as a new Jumanji movie.  It’s called Zathura.

BB:  *laughs* Well, yes.

CVA: Sony actually commissioned some market research to see what the kind of residual interest in Jumanji might be and, of course, years ago the residual interest in a 20-year-old film would be really tiny.  But because of the way people consume entertainment now you can actually have a strong fan base for films that are long gone and that’s what they discovered.  That there’s a lot of people out there who would be willing to buy a ticket to a new Jumanji.

BB:  I would.  It’s absolutely true.

CVA: It can be so many different things.  It can be a remake, it can be a sequel, it can be a prequel.  So Sony still plays around with that idea but they haven’t committed themselves to anything.

BB:  One of my favorite recent books you’ve done was Queen of the Falls.  Are you going to be doing any more nonfiction in the future or was that sort of a one-off?

CVA: Well, I’d actually set on the idea of doing nonfiction before I set on the idea of Annie Taylor.  Just as a way to create new challenges and do something different.  So I decided the specific kind of nonfiction book I wanted to do was inspired by the old biographies I read when I was a child.  The biography of Babe Ruth, etc. So I was casting around for what I thought was a worthy subject.  You know, someone’s whose life would be filled with events that would be interesting to children.  There are a lot of, I suppose, characters that might apply.  Lion tamers and things like that.  Magicians.  But I read about Annie Taylor and I didn’t remember her name, but I read about her probably in the early 70s. I can remember, I worked in a little factory and they had a lunchroom where there were stacks of old Sports Illustrateds and I would read them at lunch.  And I remember one lunch hour reading this piece called “Daredevils of Niagara Falls”, and I read about a number of characters but when I read about her I was amazed because she was the first person to go over the falls . . . and she was a she!

Photo by Johnny Wolf

BB:  And she wasn’t young!

CVA: And she was over 60. So I thought, that’s such a peculiar thing.  Such a peculiar event in American history.  I mean it’s not an epic event that changed the course of the world but it’s still so strange to me.  I thought it was odd that it wasn’t more widely known.  Because if you asked people no one could have named her.

BB:  No.  No one can name the first person to go over Niagara Falls, which seems a little strange!

CVA:  So I was bewildered right from the beginning because I could remember reading about this character but I couldn’t remember anything else about it besides from that. And I thought that was such an obscure piece of knowledge, not having heard about it for 30 or 40 years, I thought it was still buried somewhere and I would have to do some really deep research.  I’d really have to work hard.  And I thought maybe I would even have to, y’know, contact Time-Life and ask if I could go into their archive.

BB:  Had an adult biography ever been made of her?

CVA: Nothing. I didn’t even know her name so I didn’t even know exactly how to search. But I was contemplating maybe, as I say, calling Time-Life and asking if there was a microfilm library of old Sports Illustrateds and I’d find it out that way.  But then it occurred to me, because this was only a few years ago, I could just go Google “woman”, “Niagara Falls”, “barrel”.  Which is all I had to do.  So I went in and there was a fair amount of information about her but I was pleased to discover that no one had written a picture book biography and the closest thing to a biography was actually a monograph.  It was a very kind of limited publication available only in a handful of libraries.  There was a long lyrical poem about her.

BB: Well I don’t want to keep you too long.  I know you’re the star of the evening here.

CVA: No, I’m not.  There’s other people here.  Jon Scieszka’s here.

BB: *laughs – sorry Jon*  Can you say what you’re working on next?

CVA: Sure!

BB: What are you working on next?

CVA: Well, sort of in the spirit of trying to work outside of what I think of as my strike zone, which is fantasy, I’ve written a book which does have some improbable action in it but not fantastic.  It is inspired by events in my own family’s life.  It’s the moment in time almost all parents face when their children beg and plead to bring into the home a small furry creature which lives in a cage and which they will shower with affection and attention.  And so we did that, but the outcome wasn’t what they promised. Even though, I think in my family, we actually sort of emphasized the need to live up to that idea of nurturing this little creature, it didn’t work out that way and the creature had various places it went to after it left our home. So I’ve written a story about the misadventures of a small furry creature who lives in a cage and has a succession of owners.

BB:  Picture book?

CVA: Oh yes.

Photo by Johnny Wolf

BB:  I wasn’t sure.  Maybe you’re suddenly doing chapter books.

CVA: Well it’s interesting.  When I sort of figured out that was what I wanted to work on, it occurred to me that usually when you write a book for kids that has a tiny animal in it, the tiny animal is a surrogate for a child. Is a proxy for a child because, children (small, powerless, not masters of their destiny) when they see little animals that are vulnerable like that, they always identify with the animal.  I’m the animal.  I’m Peter Rabbit.  But the interesting thing about this is that there is a little animal and it has the kinds of misfortunes that a child would be inclined to identify with but the characters who are visiting some of those misfortunes are children, which is another character in the book we don’t usually identify with: the children. So I’ve kind of cast the children, not as villains, but I suppose to a degree as a kind of antagonists.

BB:  Yes.  I remember in Queen of the Falls that it was straight up nonfiction but people still said, “Oh there’s a mysterious shot of the barrel in the water.”  They really wanted that mystery.

CVA: Well there was a postscript in there where I mention the fact that for most of my career as a writer I’ve been attracted to fantasy and thought I’d do something different but as I learned more about Annie and learned more about the Falls which I visited a few times I really discovered that there’s truly kind of fantastic and surreal about things like that when human beings want to seize the golden ring, when they’re sort of untethered from reason and logic and do something big.

BB:  It’s a truly American book.  No one else would think, “I know how I can make money!  I’ll throw my body over the waterfall.”

CVA: She would be an early example of too of somebody.  There wasn’t a media that would make that happen.  But there were enough newspapers that she believed that she could make it big.

BB:  And then the manager hired another woman, was it, to pretend to be her?

CVA: That was her second manager.  Because the problem was, as revealed in the book, people had fixed in their mind what a woman daredevil would look like . . .

BB: . . . and it wouldn’t look like their grandmother.  Did they ever find the original barrel?  I know that the original barrel just got taken and they never found it?  That’s a pity. For all you know there’d be Annie Taylor Societies around.

CVA: Well when I went on my tour that’s who they set me up with. I spoke in the library on the Canadian side and then an auditorium space on the American side and there was a woman who evidently works the close precincts of the falls dressed as Annie Taylor.

BB:  Really!

CVA:  And she came to lunch.

BB:  Well, I think that’s pretty much all I had.  Oh.  Just one last question I suppose.  Is there any one of your books that you feel should get more attention?  It’s one of your favorites and you’ve always really loved it and it’s never been one of the ones that people constantly talk about.  Is there any one of your books that’s closer to your heart than any other?  I know, it’s like choosing amongst your children.  Which one do you love best?

CVA: You know, it’s always the same answer from me.  It’s posed differently as “What’s your favorite book.”  And I’ll say it’s the one I’m working on.  For an artist you’re almost required to feel that way because if you thought it wasn’t quite as good as the one you did years ago, you wouldn’t keep working on it.

BB:  Or they’ll say their first book because it was their first.

CVA:  No, I don’t feel that way.  But you asked  . . .

BB:  Which one do you feel just doesn’t get enough attention?

CVA: I suppose if I could take all attention I’ve gotten a redistribute it amongst my books I might take a little attention from The Polar Express and sprinkle a little of that on A Bad Day at Riverbend.

BB:  I love A Bad Day at Riverbend!  All right.  Well so much for meeting with me!

So that was that.  Fun stuff.  After that it was back to the tiny food (round two) as well as the actual dinner.  I found myself at a truly lovely table with Ted and Betsy Lewin alongside Jennifer and Richard Michelson. Here are some photos taken of the event that might amuse.

Roger Sutton, Jon Scieszka, and Alix Kennedy just playing it cool. Photo by Johnny Wolf.

Jon Scieszka and Carol Rasco. Photo by Johnny Wolf.

Proof positive that Eric Carle himself was actually there. And bidding at that! You’d have to be a pretty cold fish to bid against him. Photo by Johnny Wolf.

The host-ests with the most-ests – Tony and Angela DiTerlizzi with some bloke between them. Photo by Johnny Wolf.

I won’t go into how easy it would have been to lift this little sculpture and place it in my bad. It comes with its own built-in handle, for crying out loud! Photo by Johnny Wolf.

Got to the event and then realized I’d forgotten all my make-up. True story. Seen here with Vicki Cobb. Photo by Johnny Wolf.

Aww. Barbara Bader and Roger Sutton. Photo by Johnny Wolf.

Then the bells rang and we were shuffled upstairs to the actual awarding of the awards.  Since Jennifer had to leave before the speeches, Rich was nice enough to let me borrow her seat upstairs!  Awfully nice of him.

Our hosts for the evening were Angela and Tony DiTerlizzi.

Photo by Johnny Wolf.

And we were off!  Barbara Bader, if you do not know, was a longtime contributor to the Horn Book and wrote the seminal scholarly book, American Picturebooks from Noah’s Ark to The Beast Within.  She was quick and to the point.  Usually folks at these awards are.

Photo by Johnny Wolf.

Next up, the daughter of Lyndon Johnson.  I honestly had no idea that Lynda Johnson Robb, Reading Is Fundamental’s Founding Board Member and Chairman Emeritus, held that distinction.  She was introduced by Paul O. Zelinsky and then proceeded to inform me of a variety of facts, none of which I had known.

Photo by Johnny Wolf.

Carol Rasco, President and CEO of Reading Is Fundamental, is someone I knew far better.  Check out that awesome necklace while you’re at it.  Good stuff!

Photo by Johnny Wolf.

Next up, Rosemary Wells.  *check program*  Rosemary Wells?  Well, yes.  She was introducing Phyllis Fogelman Baker, editor and publisher, and someone who apparently had a thing for high high heels.

Photo by Johnny Wolf

Unfortunately, Ms. Baker couldn’t make it.  Fortunately, it was decided that Julius Lester would do the honors.  Unfortunately (this is turning into a Remy Charlip book here) he couldn’t make it either.  Fortunately, Jerry Pinkney was on hand to read Mr. Lester’s own tribute to Ms. Baker.  And I must say, he did it like a pro.  Yes, the words “pubic hair” did consist of part of the speech, but Pinkney read on like it didn’t even matter.

Photo by Johnny Wolf

Fun Fact: Do not read the words “pubic hair” aloud if your next presenter is Jon Scieszka because by GUM he’s going to find a way to incorporate it into his introduction.  Indeed, Scieszka was there to introduce Van Allsburg.  His decision then was to construct a false narrative of Mr. Van Allsburg’s past (in keeping with the tone of his books), incorporating all the various oddities folks had mentioned about the previous honorees.  It was mildly brilliant.

Photo by Johnny Wolf

You will notice that I have a penchant for picking the photos where folks spread their hands.  I cannot lie.  I really prefer them.  Here is Mr. Van Allsburg doing the deed.  By the way, doesn’t he look EXACTLY the way you’d expect Chris Van Allsburg to look?  I don’t know why but somehow, this is perfect.  And in the course of his speech he included the line I’ve made the title of today’s post.  I’m still turning it over in my mind.

Photo by Johnny Wolf

Ah, but the night was not done!  A final award was to be bestowed by our hosts and it was none other than the golden bow tie award.  These went, I believe, to Roger Sutton and Mr. Van Allsburg (one must assume in lieu of Timothy Travaglini, who was not present at the time).

Photo by Johnny Wolf

Then on to desserts . . .

Photo by Johnny Wolf

. . . and goodie bags . . .

Photo by Johnny Wolf

And the night was done.  For the record, that little Stinky Cheese Man puppet is a blast.  When you stick your fingers down his legs to make him run, his head bobs in all possible directions like crazy.  It’s incredibly amusing.  As for the bow tie, I know a nice pit bull who appreciated it.  This is true.

Many thanks to the folks at the Carle who made all of this possible.  I believe they wanted me to mention on their behalf, “We thank everyone who came out to support The Carle in its 10^th anniversary year!”  And for my part, thanks too to Alexandra Pearson for setting up the Van Allsburg interview.

For more info on the 2013 Honors be sure to check out this website as well.

Photo: Johnny Wolf

I’m sure that by now you’ve already ready the PW recap of the 2012 Carle Honors called, so fittingly, Wit, Wisdom and One Very Drunk Puppet.  Steeped as I am in edits for a book, I have not been as timely with my posts as I would like.  As a result, the darn “drunk puppet” line has already been taken.  Shazbot!  That is okay.  I make do.

Now this would be the seventh Eric Carle Honors to take place and if I’m doing the math correctly then I have been to six of them.  As you may recall they are held once a year and are bestowed by the Eric Carle Museum.  I was there in the early days when Mo Willems had to take a freight elevator to the Honors because he was wearing jeans.  I was there when they made a ginormous cake in the shape of a caterpillar  . . .  and then did not proceed to chop him into delicious bits (I would’ve killed to gnaw on one of his eyes).  I was there when it moved to Guastavino’s for the very first time, which also happened to be the very DAY I discovered I was pregnant with my first child, and I was there this time around in the same location.

There’s a trick to getting to Guastavino’s looking your best.  You can either take a cab and arrived looking coiffed and composed and like a million bucks.  Or, you can slip on your sneakers, listen to Gangnam Style on the radio, walk all the way over to the bridge the restaurant resides beneath, and then change from your sneakers into cute shoes at the outdoor seating area half a block away.  Guess which one I opted for.  The nice folks working the door didn’t even blink as I whipped out what must be the world grossest hairbrush (seriously, it could win its own not-under-a-bridge awards) to tap down the frizziest of frizzy hair for the scant 15 seconds before it would make its sterling recovery.

I had an ulterior motive to my visit to the honors this year.  Not that I didn’t want to see the honorees.  Each one was a delight.  And not that I didn’t want to eat copious amounts of tiny food (it’s the only time I get to remember what caviar actually tastes like).  And not that I don’t enjoy the fellow attendees and the art on auction and the ambiance and all of that.  But my real intent this time around was to break in my matron of honor outfit.  You see, this upcoming weekend I’ll be in the bridal party (my first) for my l’il sis (she of the previously mentioned mohawk).  And l’il sis requested that her ladies wear 40s style black dresses and red shoes.  Hence the black dress seen here:

Hence the red shoes, captured for posterity, by the quick pen of Paul O. Zelinsky (who drew them, if I’m going to be honest, because someone asked him about them and he was trying to show them what they were like).

Fun Fact: Standing for several hours in these shoes is less than entirely fun.  The more you know.

The mingling that occurred before the Honors was much with the fun.  I usually like to meet at least one new author or illustrator when I attend, but it’s tricky because you never quite know how to approach.  Usually the best method is to get someone to say, “Oh, you don’t know [blank]?  Come on over and I’ll introduce you!”  That’s how I got Lois Ehlert last year.  Imagine my life as a large unending Bingo card that will never be finished.  That’s what it’s like trying to meet everyone.  This year I met Kate Feiffer officially and then managed to have a singularly awkward talk with Lane Smith that was entirely my own fault.  Sweet man that he is, he saw me peering at the auctioned art and struck up a conversation.  Reader, I blanked.  I almost never do this but he caught me off-guard and somehow I managed to do an utter talk-fail.  You should have seen me.  My lips, they were two pieces of fried baloney just jibber-jabbering away about nothing at all.  The minute he turned to other folks with his lovely wife (with whom I was also equally mum) I realized that I should have complimented his new Abraham Lincoln picture book, which I actually like very much.  I could have also brought up that subversive children’s literature blog he did with Bob Staake and which Roger Sutton had been asking me about a day or two before.  ARG!!  I went to drown my sorrows in very very tiny hamburgers.  Seriously, it would take four of those things to make even a slider.

The art auction where I lost my composure was, as ever, a stunner.  I am but a poor humble librarian.  I have no money.  So like most folks I stare in silent awe and envy at works of art that would look damned BRILLIANT on the walls of my home.  I mean, just look at this Gabi Swiatkowska piece.

Photo: Johnny Wolf

And then there was this Lucy Cousins:

Photo: Johnny Wolf

If you listened very closely you could actually hear her squeak, “Betsy!  Why won’t you put me on your child’s bedroom walls?  Why?”

I’m also a big fan of seeing who DOES actually bid on the works.  This year I saw Suzanne Collins’ name (though I think it was by proxy since the woman herself was not in evidence) and a guy by the name of Christopher B. Milne.  I’ve seen Mr. Milne’s name before (I should considering he’s the museum’s chair) and like every other time I’ve seen it I couldn’t help but wonder . . . any relation to Christopher Robin Milne?  Any at all?

Then we were all persuaded to go upstairs, sit in a room bathed in cool green light, and watch smart people bestow awards on smart people.  The Carle Honors are very fulfilling awards in this way.  There’s never a time someone receives an award and you think to yourself, “Why did they get an honor?”  They know how to pick ‘em.  Can’t help but think it would be a fun award to help select folks for.

Photo: Johnny Wolf

To introduce Mr. Eric Carle himself, up to the stage came Jules Feiffer and Norton Juster.  Jules was smart, Norton acerbic.  The location of Guastavino’s provided last year’s honoree David Macaulay to wax rhapsodic about the very structure above us.  This year Mr. Juster noted that this event meant that at least one dire prediction his parents proclaimed when he became an author had come true: They knew he’d end up under a bridge someday.

So it was that Eric Carle took to the stage and was his usual charming self.  He’s Eric Carle.  He is not going to breathe fire or lambast the attendees.  He is going to be a sweet and good presence in this cold cruel world.  That is who is is.  That is what he does.  Nuff said.

Photo: Johnny Wolf

Which brings us to the drunk puppet.  I had glanced at the program that evening but had not registered the special guest, one Joey Mazzarino.  Even if I had I don’t think his resume would have stood out to me.  So up onto the stage leaped Mo Willems to present Bridge (“individuals who have found inspired ways to bring the art of the picture book to larger audiences through work in other fields”) award recipient Christopher Cerf.  I met Mr. Cerf years ago when I attended a Street Gang book signing.  Nice fella.  Since Mo used to do work for Sesame Street before he went the picture book route he was a natural presenter for Mr. Cerf.  Alas, he was interrupted midway through by a sock puppet named (and spellings vary on this but I think I’m correct in calling him) Saki.  The minute Saki opened his big sock mouth I could tell we had a professional puppeteer on our hands.  You can just sorta tell.  A guy doesn’t spend his entire life with his arm above his head without coming across as better than the average sock puppeteer.  This was the Joey Mazzarino I referred to earlier and I enjoyed him very much.  Though, truth be told, I like any awards event that involves Muppeteers at some point (National Books Awards, etc.).

Photo: Johnny Wolf

After Mr. Cerf spoke it was Floyd Cooper who stepped up to introduce Angel (“whose generous financial support is crucial to making picture book art exhibitions, education programs, and related projects a reality”) Kent L. Brown, Jr.  Now Cooper is definitely a guy I should have taken time to speak to since his work on this year’s Brick by Brick by Charles L. Smith is superb.  Some of his finest stuff.  Alas, no Cooper time did I receive, though I would be seeing quite a lot of Mr. Kent L. Brown in a couple weeks.  You see, he’s the executive director of the Highlights Foundation and I had the pleasure of speaking at one of their events just this past weekend with the likes of Leonard Marcus, Linda Sue Park, Deborah Heiligman, and Patti Lee Gauch.  So I am very pleased to see the man get big awards.  Though, to be frank, I’d be pleased even if his Highlights folks didn’t ask me to come and talk.

Photo: Johnny Wolf

It was an evening of buddies when Barbara McClintock and Natalie Merchant (yup, THAT Natalie Merchant) took the stage to sing the praises (not literally) of legendary editor Frances Foster.  Frances was receiving the Mentor (“editors, designers, and educators who champion the art form”) award and the two were downright giggly as they quoted extensive quotes from Frances lovers the world over.  She was, as you might imagine, class incarnate.  It’s not like I’m even an editor, but I still want to be her someday.  When I grow up anyway.

It was Anita Silvey who introduced the Artist (I’m not going to quote the description on this one . . . it’s fairly obvious, no?) of the evening. Yup.  Mr. Lane Smith.  Having survived my onslaught of awkwardness he gave a lovely talk.  One might have been a bit surprised that Ms. Silvey was introducing Mr. Smith and not . . . *sigh*  Ah well.

Then it was time to go downstairs and attempt to eat lots and lots of tiny desserts without appearing to be a complete and total barbarian.  Tiny puddings.  Tiny slices of cake.  Tiny little fudgey brownie things.  After stumbling out of the place with my comfy shoes reattached and Gangham Style still, inexplicably, blaring from the radio, it was time to go on home.  Another year, another great event.

Special thanks to the Carle folks for allowing me to lurk amongst the heavies.  And mighty congrats to those honorees.  Even those I do my darndest to baffle.  Thanks too to Sandy Soderberg, Jane Curley, and all the good folks at The Eric Carle Museum for yet another wonderful year.

I had the honor to attend a happy and heart-warming celebration of Eric Carle’s 80th birthday and The Very Hungry Caterpillar’s 40th anniversary at a spacious terrace and loft in New York City on September 24. Superb, renowned illustrator Eric Carle is a charming, generous and funny man. When we arrived, Mr. Carle and his wife Barbara warmly greeted everyone. At one moment, I glanced over and saw Mr. Carle bending down graciously to talk with beautiful Alice Provensen, now in her 90s, who had traveled all day on a plane from California to attend and accept the Carle Artist Award. What a legacy of children’s illustrators in the room.

The loft terrace was bathed in light as the sun set on a perfectly warm fall evening. All of Mr. Carle’s friends saluted him and the Museum surprised him with a giant birthday cake shaped like the Very Hungry Caterpillar! Awardees received a precious framed print of a Carle butterfly. It was wonderful to see so many friends of First Book including Laura Geringer, Judith Haut, Lisa Holton, Leonard Marcus and Amy Schwartz, Ned Rust, Susan Katz, Barbara Marcus, to name a few, at the festivities.

Our talented friend and great supporter, Joan Allen, fresh from her riveting portrayal of Georgia O’Keeffe, was on hand to introduce First Book President, Kyle Zimmer, as the winner of the Carle Angel Award. Kyle told a wonderful story of one of our book Recipient Groups who used the Very Hungry Caterpilla to start a reading group among teen mothers and how it brought laughter to their stormy lives.

A great event with kudos and many thanks to Alix, Mo, Rebecca, and all the wonderful Museum staff. What a heritage they are preserving!