Ruth Ayres has a link-up on weekends where people link to posts that are celebrations about their week. I love this reminder to celebrate every week and I appreciate the community we have through this link-up.
Me & Margarita Engle with her Zolotow Award
Two years ago, I went to the Charlotte Zolotow Award event and met Margarita Engle. She won the Zolotow award for her book Drum Dream Girl. The award ceremonies for the Zolotow are generally small affairs and are wonderful because we all hear from the author, but have some time to talk to the author individually also.
That day, I had no idea that I would be serving on the committee within a few years, and I'm so glad to have had this experience. It was a huge task to read hundreds of picture books throughout 2017. The hardest part was narrowing it down to a small list. Today I celebrate the opportunity to be a part of the committee and having the time to spend with so many wonderful books.
The Zolotow Award is administered through the CCBC (Cooperative Children's Book Center) part of the school of education at UW Madison. The announcement of this year's award books will be made before the end of the month.
I learned so much through this experience and also got to talk about books with the committee members. Time spent reading and talking about picture books is always a gift.
I learned so much through this experience and also got to talk about books with the committee members. Time spent reading and talking about picture books is always a gift.
If you communicate with her, I would love for Margarita to know I had a child who found an image of her book in a stack of papers I had this past week. He immediately folded it up in his pocket. He wanted to keep it, because he loved that book so much! (Well, guess what we are reading tomorrow!)
ReplyDeleteThank you for your work on the committee. What a job to look at so many picture books.
Hi Kendra. Thanks for stopping by. I copied your comment to Margarita Engle on Twitter. She had this to say "Thank you, Crystal! I am especially thrilled to read about the boy who loved Drum Dream Girl!
Delete#YPPLaureate #Poetryfoundationchildren"