A Personal Caldecott History, by Steven Herb

Steven Herb traces his personal history with the Caldecott, through the lens of eight well-loved winning books:

1953 – The Biggest Bear, Lynd Ward
The Caldecott came to me as an adult. I hadn’t thought about it much as a kid because I jumped into chapter books very early. I learned about the Caldecott when I was studying children’s literature in college in the 1970s. That’s when I read The Biggest Bear for the first time, a book that was actually published the year I was born. Many years later I’ve gotten to know this man who was a genius and part of a fascinating family. Lynd is a real hero in these parts because his daughters Nanda and Robin have given his collection of art to Penn State. So we have a huge collection of prints on rice paper and some original drawings from The Biggest Bear. He was a prolific illustrator of children’s books, many of which were written by his wife, May McNeer. He influenced the creation of the graphic novel with his six wordless novels from 1929-1937. I got to know about his father, Harry Ward, who was involved with the ACLU, and it was wonderful to get firsthand stories from his daughter, Robin. One of the stories is about an illustration in The Biggest Bear in which Johnny Orchard is rowing the bear back to an island to try to get rid of it. It had become a bit of a nuisance pet. In the boat, Johnny is sitting up high because he is so little and the bear is so big. It turns out that Lynd actually modeled Johnny after his father, who was a very slight man, and the bear after his mother, who was somewhat larger. I’m not sure he ever told them that, but he did tell his kids. I’ve also seen the copy of the book bound in bear fur that was given by Houghton Mifflin to Lynd Ward, and he later said that it’s the only book that the family dog ever liked. May McNeer added that the book got dandruff. We had that book as part of a display here at Penn State two years ago.

1964 – Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak
When I taught at Dominican University, I held a Caldecott of all Caldecotts where we nominated any book that had won, defended our selections, had people represent them, and then voted. We revisited the best of the best. I did it twice in two different classes and each time the best Caldecott of all the Caldecotts was Where the Wild Things Are. It’s the highest tribute you can get, a class of 25-30 students, ranging in age from 22 to 60, in two different years picking Wild Things. I suspect in another 50 years Maurice might still win that poll.

1983 – Shadow, Marcia Brown
As a new member of the profession, I went to my first American Library Association conference in Los Angeles. I was just over 30 years old, wide-eyed, and I was very excited to be at the Newbery-Caldecott banquet. Shadow, by Marcia Brown, had won that year. Everybody has favorite books that win the Caldecott, and then they have some that make them say, “Huh?” This has always been the “Huh?” book for me. In part, it seems so inaccessible to children, and what made it seem so much more inaccessible to me were that the Honor recipients were two wonderful books. When We Were Young in the Mountains by Cynthia Rylant and Diane Goode was such an interesting and fun story about growing up in West Virginia. And Vera B. WIlliams’s A Chair for My Mother was one of those rare books that when I would see it read to children, they would get very quiet. There’s a fire in the apartment, and they just can’t imagine losing all of that stuff. And then hopefulness grows as they start to save money for a chair for the little character’s mom. I remember being puzzled by the fact that the award went to this inaccessible, odd piece of work and to a person who had already won the medal twice. Everybody grouses about the Caldecott some time, so I started off my association with the Caldecott banquet grousing myself.

1988 – Owl Moon, Jane Yolen  
A few years after my introduction to the Caldecott banquet, I was asked to be on the Caldecott committee. Interestingly, one of the other librarians on the committee, Susan Patron, became an author and went on to win the Newbery Medal for The Higher Power of Lucky. We had only two books receive recognition that year, and Owl Moon won. It’s a very quiet book about a little girl and her father who are out trying to find owls on a snowy evening. It’s beautifully done, and it’s remarkable what John did with basically blue and white. In 1987, I wrote this in my nomination:

Owl Moon breathes the cold air of winter, the quiet stillness of the woods blanketed by snow. Even at its most basic, as an illustrated walk through the woods, it is crisp, clear, and warm despite the cold. Add the wonderful simplicity of Yolen’s story of tradition, patience, and family to the stunning illustrations, and Owl Moon becomes a true picturebook – where the sum is different from and greater than the parts. I read Owl Moon once and put it down with just a flicker of an effect on me. But, that flicker was like a spark which lit my enthusiasm for the book in each subsequent reading. It’s sneaking up on me like the night sneaks up on winter days. There is peace in Owl Moon and beauty, and something close to majesty.

1988 – Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters, John Steptoe
The other book that was recognized was Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters. I was on the Boston Globe-Horn Book committee that year as well, and the two committees don’t have corresponding calendars. The Boston Globe–Horn Book Awards look at books from summer to summer, and the Caldecott considers books from January 1 to December 31, so you have two different pools of books. Mufaro was published in the first half of the year, so it was in competition for the Boston Globe-Horn Book award with books that were from the Caldecott’s previous six months, and it won. So I was on a committee that selected Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters as the best picture book of the year, and then a few months later, here it was again competing for the next award. If there’s only one Honor book, you realize that there had to have been quite a battle for winning the Caldecott because that’s a book that has stood out among all of the others along with the winner. John Steptoe died not long after that, and I think it was his last book.

2008 – The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Brian Selznick
The Invention of Hugo Cabret was probably one of the bigger shocks that we’ve ever had in the world of the Caldecott. I don’t think anyone ever imagined that a book of 500 pages was going to win. And it’s a book where there are sometimes double pages of text and no illustrations and sometimes no words. It’s a very good book, but it was also a very bold choice. I’m sure it was a delight for some and caused consternation for others. A graphic novel hasn’t won since. The point is to choose the most distinguished picture book published in America, and every committee is different and every batch of books is different. One year it’s a book that most appropriate for a 4-year-old and another year it’s a book that’s most appropriate for a 14-year-old, which is the upper limit for the Caldecott and Newbery. It has nothing to do with committee intent and everything to do with the pool of choices. This year a wordless picture book won, but it’s also interesting that there were two books about Jane Goodall this year. It’s almost that stars align and two people get the same ideas, or maybe they had some wine together and forgot that they shared the idea and off they go. I’ve critiqued a couple studies over the years that have looked at what the Caldecott isn’t. Why do the books show women in these kind of roles versus these kind of roles? In some ways it’s an unfair analysis because one book that has won the award can’t represent all books. It’s too much pressure on that book. I think the list of Notable Children’s Books is a more valuable snapshot of what’s happening in a given year than any of the individual awards.

2012 – A Ball For Daisy, Chris Raschka
A Ball For Daisy is a wordless picture book about a little dog whose joy in life is a red ball that she sleeps beside and chases and then it gets punctured by a another rambunctious dog in the park. And at first Daisy can’t believe it. She tries to shake it back to life, and she looks at her owner in stunned silence. Her owner throws it away, and Daisy doesn’t even see that because her head is down. She comes home and is on the couch and whereas before she rode on the couch like a surfboard with her ball beside her, now she’s sitting on the couch and begins to sink into it as the room darkens. She’s so forlorn, and the next day she seems to be getting better, but her eyes are still closed as she’s walking along. But the little girl who owns the other dog gives her a new blue ball, and Daisy is happy again. It always bothered me that that the color of the ball changed, but for the dog it doesn’t matter. They’re both gray. It’s his second win, and Chris Raschka has joined elite company. Only a few people have won twice since Robert McCloskey first did it in 1941 and 1958. Two people have won three times, Marcia Brown and David Weisner.

2012 – Blackout, John Rocco
Blackout is the story of a family in an urban setting who see the light go out. There are a lot of fun elements. One of them is the portrait of Thomas Edison hanging on the wall. I think Edison is looking down with some chagrin at all of the things they are using electricity for. When the lights go out, the family who would have been too busy to do anything together, now find themselves forced together up to the roof, where a block party ensues. They play shadow games, point out the stars, and then they go to the street and there are street musicians and free ice cream. When the light come back on, they go back inside and all temporarily go back to their electronic enterprises. But then the little boy decides that they are going to play a game together. We did talk about the definite tribute to Sendak’s In the Night Kitchen in the theme and the illustrations. Sendak himself talked about the tributes he made to Disney and to Laurel and Hardy in his book, so it makes sense that Rocco either deliberately or inadvertently would make some sort of tribute or perhaps use it as a taking off point. But as part of the committee, I deliberately tried not to read too much about these illustrators or read a lot of reviews of the books.