Acceptance Speeches for the 1999 Awards

Annual SCBWI Summer Conference
Los Angeles, CA
July 30, 2000

Laurie Halse Anderson
Speak
accepting the Golden Kite in the Fiction category

I had a different version of this speech. It was four sheets of paper covered front and back with the same two words: thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! But I thought it would get a bit repetitive, so you get this one instead.

I am deeply honored to accept this award. I’ve always joked that I should be the poster child for SCBWI. Any success I’ve had is a result of being a member of our organization.

When my younger daughter went to first grade eight years ago, I sat down to write a book. By lunchtime I realized I had no idea what I was doing. I needed help.

After much fumbling in the darkness, I found an ad for a one-day conference being held by the Eastern Pennsylvania chapter of SCBWI. The pronunciation stumped me. "Scbweee?" You’d think a bunch a writers could come up with a zippier name. But never mind. They promised workshops on writing, manuscript submissions, and the viewing of not one, but two living, breathing editors.

The conference was organized by the Power Ranger Twins, Susan Campbell Bartoletti and Lisa Rowe Fraustino. I went, I loved it, and I was hooked. I returned home and wrote and wrote and wrote. My manuscripts were rejected, rejected, rejected. Clearly, I had more to learn.

The next year, I went to the same regional conference, which was moved to the Sterling Inn in the Pocono Mountains. I have attended nearly every year since. I would not be standing here if it hadn’t been for those conferences and the people I met there:

• People like Sue, Lisa, and their partner in crime, Laura Lee Wren, who started out as mentors and became my friends.
• People like Richard Peck who gave an inspiring speech that got me thinking about writing for teenagers.
• People like Bruce Coville, who also gave an inspiring speech, complete with leaping on a table and screaming. His workshop provided me with one of those great "A-ha!" moments that took my writing to the next level.
• And yes, I did meet editors; living breathing editors who liked my work and bought it.

But the most important thing SCBWI has given me, more important even than this pretty statue, is a community. A kind, loving community of wonderful, sometimes bizarre people who think that writing great books for kids is fun and important.

Thank you for teaching me.

Thank you for encouraging me.

Thank you for raising my standards.

And thank you for honoring my book.

[Visit on the web: www.erols.com/writerlady]

Marianne J. Dyson
Space Station Science:  Life in Free Fall
accepting the Golden Kite in the Nonfiction category

On a clear night, the stars seem so close that all we have to do is stand on our tip toes to touch them. Yet, from an early age, my parents insisted that the stars were very far away. In fact, the light I saw took years and years to reach Earth. So, when I looked up, I saw the past.

But I am a child of Apollo and the space age, and when I look up, I know I am seeing the future. As the Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky said, "The Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot live in the cradle forever."

I know it will take more than standing on my tip toes to reach the stars. It will take new and powerful rockets. It will take money, though not as much as you might think. But all that is really required to reach the stars is a group of people who want to reach them.

And the number of people who want to go is growing. Did you know that an American businessman is flying as a tourist to the Russian Mir space station next summer? Not many of us could afford the $1 million dollar a day asking price, but as more people go, the price will go down.

Studies show many people would pay a month's salary for a chance to circle the Moon, and a year's salary to hike the canyons of Mars. And I'll bet even those of you who aren't personally interested in these exotic trips know a child who would beg for the chance.

Humanity will leave the cradle soon. The first steps to permanent residence in space have already been taken. A new module was added to the International Space Station this week, and starting this fall, there will be a crew in orbit continuously. The child who reads our books today may be one of those crew members. Or, they may use the knowledge, values, and inspiration we give them to settle on the Moon, run a mining company on Mars, or build an orbiting hospital to take advantage of the weightless environment.

The possibilities for children today are as vast as the frontier of space.

It is an honor for me to play a small part in helping those children reach for their stars of tomorrow.

And thanks to the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, I now have an even greater opportunity to share my love of space with children - not just because of this award - which was a huge surprise because you know this was my first book - but because I might never have written Space Station Science if it hadn't been for an announcement in the SCBWI Bulletin.

The announcement said that Scholastic was looking for help with an encyclopedia project. With my background as a NASA flight controller and my experience writing for the magazines for a number of years, I thought I could write the space section. I sent a query. Editor Nancy Laties Feresten, who was then at Scholastic Reference and now is Director of Children's Books at National Geographic, called a few weeks later. She said, 'Forget about the encyclopedia - we want you to write a book on the space station.'

I said, "Okay!"

Luckily, just a few weeks later, the National Space Society - a nonprofit group of which I am a long-time member - had a conference in Dallas. The conference included a tour of the factory where they made the space station radiator panels. I interviewed the engineers and went home and wrote my sample chapter on the cooling system. I sent it to Nancy. She said, "You wrote your sample chapter on the cooling system?" She expected it to be boring, but found it fascinating instead. She said that if I could make a cooling system interesting, then the rest of the book would be easy!

It wasn't easy, but it was fun. The main challenge was that I was writing about systems that were still under construction. But the engineers, scientists, and public affairs people at NASA and the contractors opened their doors to me. I got to don a virtual reality helmet and go for a space walk. I got to ride around on the air-bearing floor. I even got to interview Shannon Lucid - who holds the world record for a woman in space - during her 6-month stay on the Mir space station. I asked her how you wash your hair in space. The other reporters were jealous. They told me that's what they wanted to know also, but they weren't allowed to ask those kinds of questions!

[Audience member asked, "So, how do you wash your hair in space?" You don't use water. Instead you rub it with a shampoo that you can find in a camping store. Also, you don't have to wash your hair very often in space because gravity is not pressing your hair to your head. It floats. You women are going to love it in space!]

Nancy and the talented staff at Scholastic took my drafts and made them airtight. Dave Klug turned my stick figures into art. And one of my childhood heroes, Apollo 11 astronaut Dr. Buzz Aldrin, agreed to write the Foreword.

I owe the success of this book to all those talented people, and to my family - especially my husband - and my fellow writers who helped prepare me to take advantage of the opportunity when it was presented, and then urged me to keep writing.

So, I want to urge you all to also keep writing. Every one of you has a unique set of experiences and knowledge to share. Your words or art could be just the information or inspiration that a child needs to climb out of the cradles in their life.

And one night when they are grown up, they may find themselves looking at the stars with their children, and telling them that the light took a very long time to reach them. It had to come all the way from Earth.

Thank you.

[Visit on the web: www.geocities.com/mariannedyson]

Deborah Hopkinson
A Band of Angels
accepting the Golden Kite in the Picture Book Text category

When the poet Elizabeth Bishop won the Pulitzer Prize, she was living in a small village in Brazil. The next day her picture appeared in the local paper, and when her friend went to the market, the vegetable man asked about it. "Oh yes, she’s won a prize," Bishop’s friend told him. He said, "You know, it’s amazing. Last week another one of my customers took a chance on a bicycle and SHE won! My customers are SO lucky!"

Today I, too, feel like one of the vegetable man’s lucky customers. I’d like to thank SCBWI and the members of the Golden Kite committee; my "relentless" editor Anne Schwartz, everyone at Atheneum and Simon & Schuster; Raul Colon for his wonderful illustrations; and Beth Howse and Andrea Bevens of Fisk University. I wouldn’t be here today without the support of family and friends: my husband Andy, my daughter Rebekah; my friend Michele Hill, my email writing friends, especially Debbie Wiles and Jane Kurtz; my agent Steven Malk; and last but not least my son Dimitri, who came with me to offer moral support (and to see Universal Studios).

I feel lucky, and a bit embarrassed. Some years ago I received an SCBWI work-in-progress grant for a novel. All weekend I’ve been expecting someone to walk up and say, "Hey, did you ever sell that novel we gave you the grant for?" And I’ll have to admit I failed. It’s been rejected so many times it now lives permanently in my closet.

Irwin Shaw once said about writing, "Failure is more consistent -- for everybody -- than success. It’s like living in a rainy belt -- there are some sunny days, but most of the time it’s wet outside and you’d better carry your umbrella."

This certainly describes my experience. But what is the umbrella that we writers carry, to keep us from getting soaked and dispirited? For me, I think, it’s those moments when I feel connected -- to a character, a story, a reader, or, like today, to others who share a deep commitment to the creative process.

I can remember the exact moment I discovered a connection to Ella Sheppard, who inspired A Band of Angels. Reading in bed one night in Honolulu in 1993, I turned to Andy and said, "Listen to this." And I read him the following quote from Ella Sheppard in a book by Dorothy Sterling.

"I …came to Fisk School in September 1868, with all my possessions in a trunk so small that the boys immediately called it "Pie Box." I had six dollars, and when Mr. White, the Treasurer, said that this amount would keep me a little over three weeks, I decided to stay until my money ran out."

"[It was} decided that the school must be given up….no one could see how nor where to get the money even for our necessities. Mr. White proposed to take a company of students to the North to sing for the money. Taking every cent he had and all the school treasury could spare, Mr. White and the little band of singers started, October 6, 1871, to sing the money out of the hearts and pockets of the people."

I was filled with curiosity. Who were Ella Sheppard and the Jubilee Singers? Why didn’t I know more about them? After all, they’d introduced spirituals to the world and given concerts all over Europe and America. They’d raised enough money to buy land for Fisk University, and to build Jubilee Hall, the first permanent structure in the South for the education of black students. And my next thought was, shouldn’t kids know more about this story, too?

In September 1993 I wrote to Fisk University. My letter was answered by special collections librarian Beth Howse. As I researched the story, I called Ms. Howse several times. She told me Ella was her great-grandmother. Later, she generously agreed to read my manuscript.

I didn’t actually begin writing A Band of Angels until the winter of 1995, after we’d moved to Walla Walla for my job in the fundraising office at Whitman College. I felt close to Ella’s story, but wasn’t sure if I should be the one to tell it. I waited to see if someone else would. And I waited. I knew Pat McKissack had written a profile of Ella and asked her if she planned to write more about Ella. But no. She encouraged me to go for it, as did my friend and colleague James Ransome.

In the end, Ella’s story would not leave me alone. It was as though her spirit reached out and touched me in a way I can’t quite explain. Perhaps because education has been so important in my own life. Or that for many years my day job has been in college fundraising. Or perhaps it’s that we share the same birthday. I don’t really know.

My first draft, though, was hardly a success. In her letter to me, Anne Schwartz said, "I don’t quite know what to say about this fascinating manuscript." Much later she told me she really didn’t have any idea what to say, and had simply decided, "Well, I’ll just write Deborah a letter anyway." Somehow her usual insightful suggestions set me on a path. Six months and six drafts later, we had a story.

A Band of Angels is historical fiction. But I hope it’s not just about the past. Last October I had the chance to visit Nashville. I took pictures of Jubilee Hall, built with the funds the Singers raised. When I show the slide of this beautiful building to children in schools, they always gasp. They are amazed. It’s as though its sheer physical presence makes Ella’s struggles and dreams real. I hope it encourages them to go after their own dreams, too.

While in Nashville I was interviewed by a sixth grader named Caroline. We sat on the floor in a hallway while she asked questions. Afterward Caroline sat for a minute with the book in her lap. She ran her fingers over the illustrations and said, almost to herself, "I really like this book."

I won’t forget that moment, just as I won’t forget this one. Next time I’m discouraged by rejection, or by my failure to get it right (which will probably be Tuesday night when I get home from work and sit in front of my computer), I’ll be grateful that I can open these memories, like an umbrella, to help me keep going.

I hope that when you next find yourself in danger of being soaked by discouragement, you’ll also have moments from this special weekend to treasure. So hold tight to your own umbrellas. Thank you very much.

Tim Coffey
Red Berry Wool
accepting the Honor Book Award in the Illustration category

When I was in elementary school, I can't remember exactly which grade I was in, it was the last day of school before summer vacation and the teacher passed out pieces of paper that were rolled up and tied with ribbon to the class. Each student received one. Mine had a picture of a yellow and black striped sneaker and at the top it read "The Golden Sneaker Award". At the time I thought it was the greatest thing to win the the Golden Sneaker Award. It didn’t really matter that everyone else got one too.

When Mercedes called about Red Berry Wool winning the Golden Kite Honor, I called my parents. I told them about the Golden Kite and what an honor it is to be recognized by my peers and how I would be flying to L.A. and I thought this is really going to impress them. The first thing my Dad said was "It’s called the Golden Kite, is that anything like the Golden Sneaker Award?"

I would like to thank the SCBWI for recognizing Red Berry Wool, also Robyn Eversole, the author, for providing me with very fertile ground for doing the illustrations, and Scott Piehl for hunting me down and taking a chance on someone who had never illustrated a children's book. I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to be a part of this book.

Red Berry Wool is about a lamb named Lalo who admires the boy who tends to the flock of sheep. The boy wears a bright red woolen sweater made from the sheep’s wool and Lalo wants a sweater like the boy’s. He asks his mother how to make a sweater and she explains that first you wash the wool, spin the wool, dye the wool, and knit the wool. Lalo gets into all kinds of trouble trying to do all of these things to himself, but each time the boy comes to save him, whether it's spinning himself over the edge of a cliff or almost drowning himself in the pond trying to wash his wool, the boy is always there to rescue him. Without giving away too much of the story, at the end Lalo realizes that he has been pursuing that which he had all along, the friendship, companionship, nurturing and caring of the boy. There was really no need to have a red sweater after all, because he’d had these things all along.

I can relate to Lalo. I’ve been working very hard nights and weekends partly because I have to eat, partly because I love to paint and love children’s books and I think on a subconscious level I’ve been trying to prove to myself that I’m worthy of the love and respect of my parents and my friends. When my Dad compared the Golden Kite to the Golden Sneaker Award I think he wasn’t just trying to be clever and funny. I think what he was really saying was that I didn’t need to prove anything after all, because I’d had it all along. That’s what I got out of reading and illustrating "Red Berry Wool". Now I hope everyone here buys the book, reads the book, shares the book and I hope you all get something out of it equally as wonderful as I did. Thank you.