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Coretta Scott King Book Award Acceptance Speech July 14, 2009

I am 6 ft 3 inches tall.
I know a lot of people start with “when I was little”.
Well, I was never little.
Growing up I was always big for my age…always the tallest.
Other girls were small, little, cutesy, itsy bitsy even….come to think of it, most of the boys were too.

But feeling big, the bigness that one feels inside, that took a little longer to settle into.
I always felt it in the loving circle of my family.
I felt a glimmer of it in the moments of some of my favorite stories—like when my mother asked God for a child, when David beat Goliath, when Peter woke up to a snowy day, when Manyara won her prince.

I think that 40 years ago, a group of people understood what feeling big is, with the hope of giving it to ALL children, and today, the people who continue to carry the torch still inspire children to be a little bigger, a little taller, a little stronger.

Bigness…I felt it again my first day of high school, going off to college, living abroad, getting into grad school, and being offered a manuscript named “Bird”…but winning the John Steptoe award has made me feel not just big, but giant. A giant with wings to go even higher. Thank you so very much for this tremendous honor.

_____________________

The 40th Coretta Scott King Award Ceremony was more than I hoped it would be. I shared the stage with some of my favorite artists and authors and was uplifted by librarians from across the country. I was especially excited to see a lot of familiar faces from the Brooklyn Public Library and the New York Public Library. New York represent! Thank you to everyone who made this possible. Here are a few pictures from the ceremony.

CSK Ceremony Water (that's Sean Qualls, this year's illustration honoree, sitting to the left of me)

Kadir Nelson (this year's author winner and illustrator honoree)

the point of it all

Once more pics are sent to me, I will post away. Now, off to bed, I’m wiped out. I’m looking forward to doing this again sometime!

At this point, I've been to enough professional conferences to have a preferred method of navigating the exhibition hall. As I mentioned in my last post, I find exhibition halls as bad as shopping malls. And considering how much I hate shopping malls (there is no faster way for me to get blood-shot eyes and a headache than to step into one), that says a lot.

So, this year I made some commandments for myself:

1. Thou shalt not pick up any more tote bags, even if they are free. Instead, I carried my usual shoulder bag with a pocket-size (when stuffed) reusable bag for overflow.*
2. Thou shalt not pick up any cheap schwag. No keychains, no pencils, nada. Don't need it, don't want to carry it.
3. Thou shalt not swipe thy exhibit card, even if it will enter thou into a really cool raffle. More likely it will only get you promotional emails and snail mail for the rest of your life.
4. Thou shalt peruse only the publisher side of the hall. I don't make decisions about automation software or carpeting for my library, so why should I spend time looking at it on the trade floor?
5. Thou shalt not pick up any publisher catalogs. This is because my library orders trade originals almost exclusively based on journal reviews. Catalogs would be useful for ordering paperback reprints, but I'd personally be better off with a brief list of what's coming out this fall/winter.
6. If thou cravest ARCs, thou shalt ask publishers if any ARCs are available, even if they are not lying in plain sight. Especially as the conference draws to a close, many publishers have just a few remaining ARCs hiding under their tables. You won't know they're available unless you ask.
7. However, thou shalt only pick up ARCs that look like things thou wouldst want to read personally.
8. Thou shalt not stand in line for a signed copy unless thou really feels like it at that moment in time, no matter how cool the author is.

It worked pretty well. I didn't end up with more than I could carry. I didn't end up with anything I didn't want. And yet I still ended up with a goodly stack of goodies to read and, I hope, enjoy.

• ARC of The Monster Variations, by Daniel Kraus (Delacorte, August 2009). I'm very excited about this one, not only because Dan is a friend of mine but also because I heard him read a chapter at the conference. It is beautifully written, and I have the feeling people are going to be talking about it.
• Signed ARC of Ash, by Malinda Lo (Little, Brown, September 2009). Ash has been getting a fair amount of buzz and is pitched as a lesbian retelling of Cinderella.
• ARC of Solace of the Road, by Siobhan Dowd (Random House, October 2009). I have to imagine everyone who has read Siobhan Dowd's previous books (among them The London Eye Mystery and Bog Child) is heartbroken that she won't be writing wonderful books for the rest of our lives. Fortunately, here's at least one more.
• ARCs of Taken, by Norah McClintock (Orca, October 2009), Running on the Cracks, by Julia Donaldson (Henry Holt, September 2009), and David Inside Out, by Lee Bantle (Henry Holt, May 2009).
• Signed copy of Leaving Paradise, by Simone Elkeles (Flux, 2007), with the snazzy new cover. This was a gift from Flux; thank you!

Now I just need some time to read all these books... but that's nothing new!
 

*My small reusable bag is something like this, but I got it at Whole Foods for about $3. I carry it in my shoulder bag. When unstuffed, it's about the size of a plastic grocery bag. In the two weeks since I bought it, I've used it at least half a dozen times. Highly recommended!

10. There are no clocks in McCormick Place. Anywhere. In a convention center where people are expected to hike, like, two miles to get from session to session, you'd think there would be a clock somewhere. But you'd be wrong.

9. The ALA conference is technically international, as a friendly young librarian from New Brunswick may prove to you on the escalator with his New Brunswickian business card.

8. The exhibition hall embodies everything that is horrible about shopping malls, including poor lighting, crowds of people not looking where they're going, and general overstimulation. However, your willingness to forgive will grow with each ARC and half-price book you add to your tote bag.

7. The Unshelved comic strip guys have the nicest people working at their booth—including themselves!

6. The best meal deal at the convention center is the salad bar. You can serve yourself a huge portion of salad, pasta, soup, and rolls and feel as if you are getting something approximating your money's worth.

5. Jacqueline Woodson is tall and gorgeous and happy to tell you where the elusive paper towels are in the Chicago Sheraton washroom.

4. Book cart drill team is the most beautiful, dorky, undercelebrated sport in the world. Every library should have one.

3. Susan Kusel is incredibly persistent, patient, and polite when it comes to meeting famous Newbery Award-winning authors. Fortunately, if you tag along with Susan, you will be rewarded by also meeting said author.

2. Meeting people face-to-face whom you've previously known only online is a great thing, especially if those people are librarian and lunch blogger Emily, Flux editor Brian Farrey, poet and 15-words-or-less-poetry host Laura Salas, and uber-librarian KT Horning.

1. You will need at least a week to sleep off the conference.