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I love your post and your painting.
Great stuff.
love

Wonderful post, thoughtful illustration!

Your illustration is beautiful--caught at the tender moment just before 'soaring'. I loved reading your post too. Wishing you an inspired year!

cheers,
Dave

love the picture and the meaning behind it- very thoughful and heartfelt.
eBeth

Dare I say it but the hand bag is particularly impressive, hopefully the new year brings creativity.

Beautiful and meaningful painting.

Here's wishing you good luck and more blessings in 2008- and thank you for all the wonderful paintings you shared with us.

Laurel, I think all who dare to care about their place in this world struggle with these same issues. I love that you have expressed it here so well for so many of us. Your art and your words are very inspiring.

just beautiful...the sky is amazing....

Great work! I enjoy your style and your stuff is very nice! keep on the nice work!
www.ruisousaartworks.blogspot.com

Your painting and your words resonate with me. The little bird looks ready to let go of the baggage and take flight. What a lovely combination of words and artwork you've put together.

lovely!

Don't be so hard to yourself, Laurel. I bet you did much more than you realize. Next year will be even better, you'll see :)

Happy New Year!

I love the painting... it speaks even without your post! I think your resolution to replenish your soul is worthy. It is so difficult to find a balance between creativity and marketing... so my new year's wish for you is that you find that balance and feel happily in touch with your creative self:>

Very powerful and full of power. The painting is beautiful, and the thoughts you provided give us all something to ponder as well. May your year be blessed.

Amazingly beautiful! And great post too! Happy New Year, Laurel!

MMMMWAAAAHH!!! that was SO nice to read and for you to express. you go get em, ms. 2008! get em right with your heart! :)))

Laurel, I wish you the very best for this new upcoming year, may it be your most courageous and creative!

[I also agree with you and Steve about taking the time to do the very thing we wanted to do in the first place, art and creating and drawing that fine line of balance between networking and creating.]

Beeeaaatiful work!!!!

The best pieces always seem to have a deeper meaning than just that first glance. Thanks for filling us in.

Awesome sunset! I like seeing the canvas come through in the close up.

Thanks for all of your encouragement.

What a wonderful sentiment! I hope the new year brings you an abundance of joy and fullness.

lovely painting; like you, looking for a change of focus this year on many things

http://ascenderrisesabove.com/wordpress/

i miss painting using acrylic on canvas. it's inspiring to see people doing it. keep up the good work. and don't worry, we all have baggages we wanna leave behind ;oP

Great concept and painting. The idea of the bird with 2007 baggage is great, and the sky is beautiful.

You have put your finger on the problem. There is always the danger that the temptations of flogging ones art are not entirely consistent with the kind of playful risk taking that was the chief pleasure that git you into making art in the first place.

Lovely!! Good luck on your very worthy goals!!

This is fantastic! Have a 2008 just like you dream to be!

Thanks for a wonderful illu and words of meaning. Thanks for comment on my blog. Have a happy new year and make spirit soar.

great piece of work.. best wishes for 2008..

thanks for dropping by the blog.

Laurel, your paintings and words are always so inspiring...i'm so glad IF is a keeper...i'd love to visit your blog every week!

Hope in 2008 you realize all your goals! good luck and Happy New Year!

hugs!

Insightful post and wonderful symbolic painting! Sounds like you are getting to the layers and that is great! Soar and be free my friend! Your talent speaks for itself! Happy 2008 to you!!!

Cute pic, sweet story. Have a merry new year & good luck soaring.

As always, great work...leave the baggage of 2007 behind but take with you the positive accomplishments of the old year into the new one. Keep up the consistent posts and best wishes for 2008...cheers!

Very nice, and an awesome big preview to fully enjoy!

Beautiful illustration! I feel as you do. . .I need to stop and smell the roses more.

wonderful painting Laurel!
Thanks for the comment on my piece :)

hellloooo from oz and new years wishes to you and yours too. knowing what we did wrong is one thing, fixing it is quite another, maybe 2008 can be just a 'ME' year for you! bless you.

I know what you're talking about!

It's so easy to get caught up in all the trappings and forget the real reason you are an artist. Not that you can't enjoy all the rest, but I guess balance is the best way to go. Not always the easiest thing to attain, but it is possible.

Thanks for reminding me of the real reason for art. Self expression and nourishment for the soul.

Always great to visit your blog.

Beautiful painting love the colors & design and how it says visually what you wrote about and more- can feel the bird is just about to soar into the brand new '08. You are wise and kind. It's all good! Thanks.

Great color and super post!!! Funny how life works out sometimes ;)

Happy New Year, Miss L. Wishing the best of everything!

what fun...your work always brings a smile !! Happy New Year too !!

very nice work,i like your stylE.
congratolations and keep the good work.
www.ruisousaartworks.blogspot.com

Your images are always so happy. FUN!

this is so sweet! like a child's fantasy...love the little guy riding on top!

HGi Val! This is wonderful, so free and light. I love your post, too!! Dreams come true!! :)

Love this, what a great way to transform your typical subject matter

How cute. I love the angle as the little house looks down at all the others!

It's interesting that the image reappears because it is so you. Lovely and happy.

You constantly amaze me! You are just so creative! I love the house with wings!

I love that this house is trying to find a home. What a great image and metaphor.

what a beautiful idea and what a lovely place to go home to. it is almost there isn't it?

Happy New Year to you, too Val!

Great idea, Val.
Flying home!

I know you will see it as you wish, Val. Then our hearts will fly with yours ;)

Happy New Year!

I love this one. The little house will have a soft landing I hope.

Great work, Valerie! I love all your houses and the flying one is so adorable!

Happy 2008!

love this, val! i wanna BE in that house (unless tables, and chairs and armoires are flying about INSIDE it!) love the color pal, the first one. like summertime sherbet! happy 2008, vallie! :))

My your neighborhoods always look very pleasant - a far cry from the sad reality of living next door to grouches and meanies. Happy new year to you Val.

Oh Val, they're just such beautiful illustrations! Your paintings are always so uplifting, so what a perfect theme for you this week! Happy New Year doll!

a : )

val, you continue to create the kind of world where people soar and kindness rules. that, my friend, is some special gift to everyone and i thank you for it a hundred times over.

my love and blessings to you and your family in 2008. see you around, i surely hope.... :)

Wonderful, like always.
Happy New Year.
love

I cannot wait to read/see "Flying Home"...sounds wonderful!

xoxo
Best Wished for 2008
teri

That is one happy little house! Hope you have a great new year!!

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, VAL!

It may just be my eyes, but I'd swear that was Sully on top of that house. :) What a great concept for a story!

It's just trying to find the Wicked Witch of the East!

cute... then cute all over again

ascenderrisesabove.com/wordpress

I am back Valerie to say I hope you had a nice celebration last night and here's wishing you and your family good luck, all the best and more blessings, new inspirations and more happy times this year 2008!

I wish you a Happy New Year!

I for one would love to be adopted by a Flying Home everytime I am on the road travelling. It could be an overnight air taxi for the wanderers - and it sure had many stories to tell.

All the best,
Cris

Happy New Year Health Wealth and Love. Denise Massachusetts

Oh, how funny - flying home! Have a wonderful, artful new year, Vqalerie!

Absoultelly wonderful!!! I would love to see a book like that. I'm sure one day... It's beautiful :o)

so magical. i love the colours.

I hope the flying home finds its way home. Another beautiful image, Val.

Very beautiful! Thought of you the other day as I drove thru Malibu while dropping off family at the airport! I always go thru Malibu so I can look for dolphins and sometimes a whale!

hey val! love the blue one especially...hope your new year is wonderful :)

I hope to see it as a children's book too! It'll happen, I believe!

Wonderful stuff! Love your little houses.

This is beautiful !!!

Opening the awards to books first published elsewhere, or published by non-US citizens doesn't mean that the committees would now have to read every English-language book published in the world. The titles would still have to appear from a US publisher. (Or am I misunderstanding this?)

And how many imported titles are published in the US in a given year, anyway? Not that many outside the categories of fantasy, thriller, and horror. The Printz committee hasn't gone down screaming because of all the books under consideration; the same will hold true of the other award committees.

This would allow committees consideration of, say, FLY BY NIGHT, or of titles published by multi-national imprints such as The Chicken House. Seems to me the sort of change that would make for a stronger award, one more representative of the best books published for children in the US each year.

"Canada has the Governor General's Literary Award. England the Carnegie Medal ... Australia the Children's Book of the Year Awards."

I guess I should have assumed all this, but it was still news to me. Instead of ALA making its awards more global (which, as you point out, would mean a lot more work for the unpaid committee), why doesn't it just do more to promote the winners of the Canadian, U.K., and Australian awards to the U.S. market?

I second Chris Barton in his suggestion.

I also feel that if it were opened up to other countries there would be even more of a chance that no one would have ever heard of the book.

Personally, I'd love to see the Newbery deliberations later in the year so that more people would have had a chance to even know about the books being discussed. It seems like far too often the book comes out of left field, and I'm guessing that is because the book hasn't hit the libraries yet. Hello, it's American Library Association award. Maybe there should be a fighting chance that the librarians in the trenches have read the book.

The Oscars are in March, no one complains that they're too late in the year. Only that they are too long.

I just posted about this over at my blog.

I think it should be opened up beyond US authors & residents; the Printz is, so why not the Newbery & Caldecott?

As for the changing ages, I agree with you 90 percent, with a 10 percent concern that recent trends with Printz winners are about the older YA readership and that some darn fine middle school novels would get neglected.

I hope they take a second look at the Newbery is for words, Caldecott is for pictures divide, so that graphic novels aren't shut out of consideration.

Michael, the article is quite brief and vague (it's not even a full page article-it's in a boxed section in the news section). The article reminds us of the requirements-that the book must be published in the US by a citizen or resident-and then quotes Kathleen Horning (ALSC president) as saying that changing the requirements is "up for discussion." An ALSC task force is studying the issue and will make its recommendations to the ALSC board, which will have the final say. It does not say one way or the other about the publisher requirements, just that the task force is reconsidering the requirements.

If only the requirement about residency was changed, would the charge to committee members change all that drastically? I'm not asking a rhetorical question, because I honestly don't know. If the requirements about residency and publisher were changed, I think that would be very problematic.

The award was created to encourage US publishers to seek out and publish quality children's literature written by authors in the United States. If the charge is still placed on US publishers (minus the author residency requirement), then I think that will keep in line with the orginial mission and recognize that US publishing is more global than it was in the 1920s.

But maybe this is just a tempest in a teapot, and the task force will not recommend changing the requirements. I'm trying not to read too much into Kathleen Horning's comments.

Thank you, Jennifer. That was my point as well. The article is so very vague that we've no sense of how big a change we might be facing. Ms. Horning does, on occasion, read this blog so I was kind of hoping she might clarify the situation. Are we talking about residency or where a book is originally published? Because of the mention of "Chicken House", it sounds to me as if they're considering both, which would carry all kinds of implications.

I just wrote this on Tea Cozy, but I figure it fits in here as well. Argue with me at will, peeps.

A co-worker of mine had a really good point about the Printz today. Consider, if you will, the fact that there are far fewer halfway decent YA novels out there when compared to children's younger and middle grade titles. The Printz committee has a MUCH easier time of it when you take that into account. The sheer volume of children's books vs. teen titles shows that there really is no comparison. So bringing up the Printz, while valid, isn't entirely fair.

Your point about whether middle grade novels might be overlooked by the Printz is incredibly valid. Maybe they would be. I'm just tired of books for teens winning the biggest children's award we have. Then again, we don't want to create some kind of Middle Grade Award, so there's probably no easy solution.

"With the growing globalization of publishing, it became increasingly difficult to define a U.S. publisher, Horning says. It was unclear, for example, whether companies such as The Chicken House, based in England and a partner of the U.S. firm Scholastic would qualify for eligibility, she explains."

Unclear? Maybe on the surface. But the second you look at the actual book contracts, it's generally quite clear whether a book is being published in the U.S., the UK, Germany,... Ask any author, publisher, or agent, and they'll be able to tell you whether their book is a U.S. book or not; large amounts of money hinge on such distinctions.

And I'm sure the Federal Government could tell you whether a publisher is U.S.-based or not. There's too much paperwork involved for people not to know.

One thought is that the Notable Books Committee members are already considering the, for want of a better term, foreign titles in question, and those committee members serve two-year terms. Granted, they don't have the pressure of picking the *one* best, but, still, they need to carefully consider a whole lotta stuff to come up with their list every year. So it seems to me that there is a precendent and people we could talk to about how this would change the volume of material under consideration for the Newbery Committee.

I agree with Fuse that I'd rather see the age level changed than the birthplace of the title in question. At this point, you don't see too many really excellent titles not being recognized. Still, it gives me a little bit of a wobbly feeling in my stomach to think of changing the criteria for such a well-established, historic award. I'm usually all about changing stuff, but this idea gives me pause.

Re: MoReader's spot-on comment about the timeframe, most of the committees face the issue that fall is a HUGE publishing season, which means that after months of work, the committees find themselves swimming in boxes of new material at the end of the year when they, themselves, only have weeks to finish reading and deliberating. When I was on Notable Recordings, I kept wondering why they don't go ahead and think about shifting mid-winter to the end of January or very beginning of February. On the one hand, this is something that would matter vastly more to ALSC and YALSA than it would to the other sections, but, honestly, what activities at mid-winter get the most attention outside the library community? It would give librarians not serving on committees more of a chance to try to keep up with what committees are considering, and it would also give committee members more space in which to give things careful consideration, which would make a change like Horning's talking about more reasonable.

"Precendent"? I almost sounded half-way intelligent. Curse the lack of an automatic spell-checker on my machine at work. (I have this on my laptop at home now, and it is brilliant.)

Perhaps if ALSC was willing to pay a salary to its committee members, thereby allowing them a chance to give up their jobs for a year so as to live and breathe the books...

Wouldn't that be a fabulous job?

I'm not even sure which piece of this news to tackle, as it is, as pointed out above, awfully vague. But here are two points to think about. I want to preface them with the prediction that the criteria for the ALSC Awards will not change. It's so much easier just to add a new award. ;-)

What does "published in the United States" mean? Right now, it means that books, even those by U.S. citizens, published by Canadian publishers such as Groundwood, are not eligible because although the company is incorporated in the U.S. and its books are sold in the U.S., its editorial offices are in Canada. So much for NAFTA! (And if you really want to light a fire under the dragons, why not question the fact that contenders must be in English?) Note, too, that the Carnegie Medal may go to a non-U.K. writer (Sharon Creech and Margaret Mahy, for example) and it can go to a book first published abroad so long as U.K. publication follows within three months.

Second, I would have a hard time accepting a change from "up through 14" to "up through twelve" because it would put the award at odds with ALSC's designated service range of birth through fourteen (overlapping YALSA for the 12-14-year-olds). Past attempts to give over, or take back, this middle-school audience by either ALSC or YALSA have always failed--mostly because such a variety of age-level specialists serve this group, and the kids themselves are at an in-between phase, so why not acknowledge that in our professional association?

Okay, a third point and slightly off-topic, but . . . I'm not sure about MotherReader's implication that if more librarians had a chance to read more of the year's books, the Newbery choice might not come as such a surprise. I suppose mathematically that's true, but is it surprise or disagreement that's really at issue here? Nobody ever intended the Newbery to reflect a professional consensus, and will a later decision date really change the hearts and minds of the fifteen committee members?

Okay, what about a separate Newbury for picture book texts? Since aside from Nancy Willard's win, picture books seem to be largely ignored by the Newbury commitee.
As for the international aspect of opening up the Newbury award - what about the availability of books from other countries? Strictly from a librarian viewpoint, books might be difficult to obtain for patrons, etc. And really - what is intrinsically wrong with having an award for American writers only? Can we never celebrate anything in without guilt?
-GW.

Did I seriously just spell Newbery wrong about a million times. Forgive. Wine with dinner.
-GW

I'm tickled by the historical fact that the Newbery and Caldecott were created to bring attention to and reward American children's books since--alone among national book awards, as far as I can tell--they're named for people from another country.

How about this? The ALA grants the Newbery and Caldecott names to IBBY or another international group, which then gives those awards to the best children's books published in English anywhere in the world two years ago; and the ALA creates new awards for US titles named after American notables.

To address Roger's thought about whether it was surprise or disagreement, let me say "surprise."

(Disagreement is another issue altogether.)

I realize that the Newbery isn't suppose to reflect professional consensus or that the later date wouldn't change the minds of the members. My point is less about how it would effect the selection of the award, and more about how to keep the award feeling relevant to the librarians that the committee is supposed to represent.

I think that its notable that with all the kid lit bloggers and Mock Newbery awards going on, that no one guessed the winner. I only saw it reviewed on one blog. (I do know it was in Horn Book.) I don't remember seeing it on any Best of 2006 lists either. The only librarians likely to have seen the book were the ones who received review copies.

At least with the Oscars, you can complain that you didn't see the movies, but you've usually known it exists.

What about Britain's Carnegie Award? Although Andrew Carnegie was born in Scotland, he emigrated to the U.S. as a boy, and is most widely known as an American industrialist and philanthropist.

The names of the American awards were chosen by bookseller Frederic Melcher who created both awards. He had his reasons for both names -- he saw them as representing high standards for American publishers, authors, and illustrators to strive for. At that time, there really wasn't an established body of American children's literature, so it's not surprising that names were borrowed from the English.

In 1937, the Children's Library Section wanted to call the new award for illustration the L. Leslie Brook Award (another British illustrator who these librarians apparently admired more) but Melcher insisted it be named for Caldecott. (It's actually refreshing to see a donor come up with a name other than his own.)

As for the ALSC Awards Eligibility Task Force, a small part of their charge is to consider the existing eligibility requirements for Newbery and Caldecott, and that's certainly the part of their charge that caught the imagination of the SLJ web reporter. For the Newbery/Caldecott/Sibert/Geisel, they are just looking at the residency/citizenship part, and the "first published in the U.S." part. They have not been charged to look at the age limits part, for the reasons Roger Sutton so clearly laid out. To give you an example of some of the issues that have come up: for Sibert and Geisel, which goes to both author and illustrator, we have had situations where the author is American and the illustrator is British, rendering the entire book ineligible.

They are also looking at the eligibility of eBooks, not as sexy a subject, but just as necessary for the smooth running of the committees.

And a big portion of their charge is to take a look at elibility requirements for the Batchelder Award, which are by far the trickiest due to changes in global publishing. For example, as the requirements now stand, the book must be first published in English in the United States. Some publishers today are co-publishing English translations with companies in other English-speaking nations and these books are, technically, ineligible for the Batchelder. In addition, the book must first be published in a foreign language in a foreign country, which makes a book such as last year's "Emil and Karl" ineligible since it was first published in the U.S. in Yiddish in 1942. The terms for Batchelder eligibility were written int he late 1960s, and, with the changes, in the publishing world since then, it's certainly time to revisit them.

I hope this will give you a sense of the sorts of issues we've been addressing in ALSC, and which the Task Force is looking at in more depth. They are now in the process of surveying former award committee chairs and ALSC leaders, and will have a report ready for the ALSC Board at Annual. At this point, I have no idea what they'll recommend, but do know that they'll be the best-informed five people on these issues in ALA.

Very informative stuff through and through. I liked the points about why switching the ages might be a bit difficult these days. I'm still of the opinion that something should be done, but I understand that tweens are forever lost in the shuffle and we probably don't want to go about creating a Tween Award ("And the Lindsay Lohan Medal of 2008 goes to...).

What I would like to see at this point is a prediction of what will happen if the floor is opened up. Is this something that will significantly change the award playing field or just something inevitable that will merely make the process fairer for all?

Jane Yolen also pointed out to me that Britain's Carnegie can go to an American and, indeed, has. I got thrown by the requirement that the books be published in Britain in tandem with other countries. I wonder if the new standards adopted by ALSC would mimic this.