Win the Award. Yippee! Write the Speech? Yikes!

Within the next ten days, one author and one illustrator will receive a life-changing phone call. On January 26th during the ALA Mid-Winter Meeting, the Newbery and Caldecott winners for 2009 will be announced.

Can't imagine how it would feel to get that (usually) early morning phone call, but I can imagine that after a burst of joy, my nerves would jangle at the thought of preparing and delivering that necessary and spotlighted speech. To refresh my memory about how others rose to the challenge, I reread some recent Caldecott and Newbery speeches.

Here are a few memorable nuggets:

2005. Kevin Henkes. Caldecott speech for Kitten's First Full Moon.

"Kitten, of course, is a child. She is myopic. She is curious. She is persistent. She wants and wants and wants. She makes mistakes. She misunderstands. She gets hurt. She is confused. She is scared. She is also a symbol, a symbol that says: childhood is anything by easy."

2006. Lynn Rae Perkins. Newbery speech for Criss Cross.

"It takes two people to make a book - a writer and a reader - and it's not clear-cut who is doing the giving and who is receiving. The roles of giver and receiver go back and forth like alternating current, when there is a connection."

2007. David Weisner. Caldecott speech for Flotsam.

"Deliberately leaving part of the process open to spontaneity can be scary. But to grow as an artist, I have to be willing to move into unfamiliar territory."

2008. Laura Amy Schlitz. Newbery speech for Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!: Voices From a Medieval Village.

" . . . flying a kite is a bit like being a writer. Most of the time, the words aren't right and the prose drags on the ground. We don't know how to get the kite into the air . . . We only know that we have to go to the shore with the kite in our hands, in case the wind is there."

Who will be writing the Newbery and Caldecott speeches in 2009? We'll know on January 26th.

Do you have nominations?