Jeff Kinney and Robin Preiss Glasser took the top prizes Monday night at a gala to kick off Children's Book Week (May 13-19). The event, hosted by the Children's Book Council Foundation and Every Child a Reader, was held at Stage 48 in New York City. (Kudos to Robin Adelson, the CBC's executive director, and her team for seamlessly moving the event in 48 hours, after learning on Friday afternoon--from the videographer--that the original location had been shut down by the City of New York.)
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| Lisa Yee with her agent, Jodi Reamer from Writers House. | |
Children across the country cast more than one million votes for their favorite books, author and artist in bookstores, libraries and classrooms, and at BookWeekOnline.com. Author Lisa Yee served as emcee this year, speculating that after years of hosts with hard-to-spell names (think: Jon Scieszka and Jarrett Krosoczka), she was an easy follow-up, with just three letters in her last name, two of them the same.
Yee introduced actor and author Henry Winkler, and recounted how, when the Fonz got a library card on Happy Days, library card registration went up 500%. Winkler (author of the Hank Zipzer series), who struggled in school due to dyslexia, told the children in the audience, "No matter how you learn or at what rate you learn, it has nothing to do with how brilliant you are."
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(l. to r.) Young reader Betsy Romans, Tomie dePaola, publisher Nancy Paulsen, Brian Selznick, and the Ferguson Public Library's Caroline Ward Romans. |
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Last year, Jeff Kinney (who has been nominated all five years of the awards' existence), finally won Author of the Year. Now it seems he cannot lose. He won the 2013 Author of the Year Award for Diary of a Wimpy Kid 7: The Third Wheel (Amulet/Abrams). Last year's Illustrator of the Year, Brian Selznick (Wonderstruck and also artist of this year's Children's Book Week poster), sporting a tiara, said, "It's time to give this crown to the next person." The 2013 Artist of the Year Award went to Robin Preiss Glasser, illustrator of Fancy Nancy and the Mermaid Ballet (HarperCollins). Glasser admitted that she loved playing "Queen for a Day" as a child with her younger siblings. She added, "I never grew out of being a drama queen."
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| Robin Priess Glasser, Illustrator of the Year, with her husband, Bob. | |
The National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, Walter Dean Myers, presented the CBC Foundation's annual Impact Award to NPR host and special correspondent Michele Norris, creator of NPR's Backseat Book Club. Norris said she grew up with a speech impediment, and books played an important role in achieving her dream of becoming a journalist and in radio. Norris said the award is especially meaningful because her father was raised in Birmingham, Ala., where libraries were not open to him. The families of Avenue G and Ensley created their own lending library. "They weren't allowed to get books, and yet they found books," she said. Norris thanked her husband for supporting her idea from the beginning: to create something extra for "the prisoners of public radio," the children in the back seat.
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| (l. to r.) Liz Kossnar of the Book Report with Jon Scieszka and his wife, Jerilyn Hansen, and Carol Fitzgerald, board member of Every Child a Reader and founder of the Book Report. | |
Reading Is Fundamental will donate to a school in need, designated by each of the winners, a set of 40 STEM books, and First Book will donate 5,000 books in the names of each of the 2013 Children's Choice Book Award winners--30,000 in all. (See the Children's Book Week events taking place across the nation here.) --Jennifer M. Brown
The complete list of the 2013 Children's Choice Book Award winners:
Kindergarten to 2nd Grade Book of the Year: Nighttime Ninja by Barbara DaCosta, illus. by Ed Young (Little, Brown)
3rd to 4th Grade: Bad Kitty for President by Nick Bruel (Roaring Brook/Macmillan)
5th to 6th Grade: Dork Diaries 4: Tales from a Not-So-Graceful Ice Princess by Rachel Renée Russell (Aladdin/Simon & Schuster)
Teen Book of the Year: The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (Dutton/Penguin)