Oh, So Sweet!

Leave it to me to book my return flight from ALA Midwinter at the same time as the awards are being announced. As I land in Detroit all 100 passengers discover they have missed their connecting flights.

Everyone is shouting at the flight attendants or complaining into their cells. I click online to check the awards. There I find that Melissa Sweet has won a Caldecott Honor and Beth Krommes has won the biggie. I start whooping and laughing and jumping up and down in the middle of the angry crowd. Silence descends. The mob is all staring at me.

I think, first person killed for a Caldecott--a fate I had coming.

CONGRATULATIONS MELISSA & BETH!!!

Lunch Box Illustrators Land Caldecott

There was much dancing of jigs by Curious City at the ALA Award news this week.

Illustrator, Beth Krommes took the Caldecott Medal for her (beyond) lovely picture book, The House in the Night. Curious City Lunch Box attendees will remember her meticulous illustration style of pulling a reverse image out of ink-saturated scratchboard. Where you there?

The dancing continued with much abandon when it was announced that Melissa Sweet took a Caldecott Honor for the illustrations for A River of Words: The Story of William Carlos Williams. Melissa's layering of colored pencil, bits of paper, old book jackets, hand-drawn fonts, and Williams poems surpasses all of her other brilliant work.

Curious City and the kids of Maine have much to thank Melissa for. We remember best making birds nests with her for a Lunch Box celebration of her illustrations in the book, The Boy That Drew Birds.

Discover more of the ALA Book Awards.