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By Nicki Richesin, The Children’s Book Review
Published: April 23, 2012

Kate Bernheimer

Kate Bernheimer first enchanted children with her captivating The Girl in the Castle inside the Museum. Her latest The Lonely Book is yet another heartfelt addition to her mesmerizing picture books. Kate’s forthcoming children’s book The Girl Who Wouldn’t Brush Her Hair is being illustrated this spring. She is also the author of fiction for adults, including a trilogy of novels and the story collection Horse, Flower, Bird (Coffee House Press). Kate is founder and editor of Fairy Tale Review, and of three fairy-tale anthologies including the World Fantasy Award winning My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales (Penguin Books). She has spoken on fairy tales as a contemporary art form at such venues as the Museum of  Modern Art, the Chicago Public Library, the Boston Public Library, The Walker Art Center, Ball State University Museum of Art, and Harvard University. We’re delighted to share a conversation about her books, study of fairy tales, and great love of children’s literature.

Nicki Richesin: My daughter and I were absolutely riveted by your enchanting new The Lonely Book. Could you please describe how you created this book and the way the story first appeared to you? Did you pine for your own lonely book as a girl?

Kate Bernheimer: How nice that you and your daughter both enjoyed The Lonely Book—especially because I wrote the book during the time when my daughter was first learning to read.  She was so excited about reading, she had started tucking books under her pillow at night—sometimes as many as seven or eight, which couldn’t have been comfortable! This brought back many memories for me, especially that of bringing armloads of books home from the library and running up to my room to hang out with them for hours and hours on end.  I do remember feeling sorry for the books I could not check out, and also feeling sorry for a book if I took it off the shelf to consider but placed it back without taking it home. Sometimes I would check out a book I mostly didn’t want to read just because I had picked it up—I didn’t want to hurt its feelings.  I got the idea for The Lonely Book one night after reading a favorite book from my own childhood to my daug

Novelist Nnedi Okorafor has won the World Fantasy Award for her novel, Who Fears Death.

Author Jeff VanderMeer described the book: “[The novel] is a powerful combination of science fiction, fantasy, African folklore, and stark realism. It tells the story of Onyesonwu, a woman of extraordinary powers in a post-apocalyptic West Africa, a world of perils and mysteries, of lost technologies and brutal wars. Onyesonwu’s name means “Who fears death?”, and her birth is the result of rape used as a weapon in battle; this legacy affects the woman she becomes, and the novel portrays her education as a sorceress and her quest to bring order and peace to her life and world.”

The announcement was made at the World Fantasy Convention in San Diego. We’ve included the other award winners below…

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