Inside the Caldecott with Steven Herb

Inside the Caldecott with Steven Herb

Interview by Victor Sensenig

The American Library Association’s Caldecott Medal is the premier award for children’s picture books and a major determinant of what goes on book shelves and reading lists in American schools and libraries. Because of its sizable impact on what children have available to read, the award reveals the inner workings of the informal curriculum and the way adult tastes and judgments affect children’s learning experiences.
Steven Herb, the director of the Pennsylvania Center for the Book and the chair of this year’s selection committee, notes that the winning book has a print run of 100,000 on the day of the announcement. Winning books also stay in print for the rest of the authors’ and illustrators’ lives. Dr. Herb was the chair of the 15-member committee that chose this year’s winner after reviewing about 1,500 books. In an radio interview with NPR, Herb talked about the 2012 winner A Ball for Daisy by Chris Raschka. In this interview for the AJE Forum, Herb discusses in more depth the work of the awards committee, the educational function of the award, and the legacy of Caldecott stalwart Maurice Sendak, who died in May.

Q: The primary consideration in awarding a Caldecott Medal is the illustration of the picture books. How does the selection committee include consideration of the whole book, including the text?

Steven Herb: There is a certain marriage of words and images that is important. The criteria, which are listed on the American Library Association’s website, suggest that components of the book besides its illustration can harm its chances. But this year the winner is a wordless book. As Art Spiegelman says, there are plenty of words in a wordless book. They are just in the mind of the reader. Another requirement is that the picture book must be self-contained and not dependent on a film or computer program. There are so many things now that are being released as apps at the same time, or a DVD of somebody reading the book. It’s getting interesting.

Q: The criteria also note that the book must be directed at an audience of children.

SH: Yes, we often would ask ourselves, “Who is the child audience for this?” Some of the city dwellers on our committee, when we first talked about Blackout, which is one of the Honor books this year, said, “Oh, good, you like it, and you’re from the country.” The other person said, “Of course, we have blackouts too.” But the city folks really did think it seemed urban. And because they liked it, they were afraid it would seem too city-specific, and it turned out that every committee member liked it. And that’s unusual. Even the books that make it the whole way to the end, and even the books that win, sometimes have somebody who is a detractor. It’s a committee decision.

Q: Does the decision require consensus?

SH: It doesn’t have to be full consensus, but it has to be a majority decision. The book that wins has to have a majority of first place votes, so that at least eight members of the committee had to pick Daisy on a ballot to get it to win. Points are assigned for first, second and third, and the winner also has to be a certain number of points ahead of the second place book. There’s a mathematical formula. Some years books win on the first ballot, but in other years it takes two or three or more.

Q: What do you do if a ballot has insufficient agreement?

SH: Well, you talk about the books again, so you have a chance to look at them anew. Somebody who on a first ballot voted for a particular book, and finds she is the only one of 15 members who voted for it, sees the writing on the wall that her favorite is not going to win, and then changes her vote to one of the other books.

Q: It sounds like you come in with your favorites.

SH: Yes, each member nominates seven, and Daisy was one of my nominations, and so were two of the Honor books. Each of us had seven nominations, and one book won and there were three Honors. That means that every person on the committee had to have at least three of the books that they supported through this award not win. There’s some universal disappointment built into the process, but it helps consolidate the individual members into a group with a shared mission.

Q: You’re bringing favorites, but also advocating for them. What does that look like?

SH: There was one that I did speak to, carefully, because I got the feeling that maybe there were some people there that didn’t like it, and then BANG! I could see they didn’t, and I didn’t have to wait for the ballot to realize that one of my favorite books was not going to make it. I learned early, maybe the second day, when it came up in a conversation. There were some people who loved it, and there were some people who really didn’t. A book that several committee members do not find distinguished is not going to win the medal. The books that are going to win are either books that everybody likes to some degree, even if there are two people who have quibbles with them. Or rarely, when everybody likes a book. And Daisy was a good example. There may have been a couple people who didn’t love it as much as they loved other books, but it didn’t have anybody strongly opposed to it. I think everybody admired what he had done, a really good example of excellence in execution of a wordless picture book. When that book came up for conversation, I thought to myself I’m going to write on a scrap of paper, “Daisy,” and turn it upside down and put it under my notebook and bet on it, because I just had a feeling. But you never know when the vote comes along.

Q: Could this process, in rewarding unobjectionable books, push the committee toward safer selections?

SH: In some ways, it’s easy to answer yes, but at the same time, “safer” can mean excellent and wonderful. It isn’t unobjectionable vs. objectionable at all, but well-executed and distinguished vs. flawed. It might have been a very creative idea, but it wasn’t carried out in as distinguished a manner as several other books.

These are 15 very different people on the committee. Fifteen people who do different things for a living, but whose shared passion for children’s literature is a common thread. They are reading the same books, but they all focus on different aspects of those books. For example, there was one member of the committee that always talked about gutters, about what got lost in the middle of the book. That was her special consideration regarding each book’s design. Then there was someone who always talked about the design of the fonts, in a very upbeat, positive way, but some of the books she was very impressed by were when the font had a design element that really complemented the style of the illustration. She added a design consideration at a level of detail that was very impressive.

Throughout the process, one of the things several people asked was, “Is this going to work on a second reading.” It’s like a joke, which you hear one time, and you laugh. But are you going to laugh a second time? That’s hard. I think the books that work the best are the books where every reading gives you another level or nuance, and A Ball for Daisy is a good example of that. Daisy’s expression the second time through when you think, “Look how he’s managed to take these watercolors and make Daisy so depressed that she seems to have sunk further into a couch and that the room is turning darker.” The way you’re working in a sunlit room and the clouds go over the sun and you feel a sudden chill. Daisy’s depression is illustrated so well.

Your question does come up all the time, but I think there are enough choices over the years that were edgy and were also the most distinguished book. Where the Wild Things Are is the perfect example.

Q: In the Night Kitchen is another one that people like to ban.

SH: Well, that was an Honor book, and maybe it would have won if it weren’t for the “Cock a Doodle Doo” moment. When I taught children’s literature out in Chicago, I talked about a continuum of appeal. Over on this side are the books that children just love, but parents think, “Please don’t make me read this again.” Dav Pilkey and Bob Munsch often sit here. They’re books about body noises and underpants. They’re goofy. Walter the Farting Dog probably sits here. And then over on the right hand side are those books the grammies buy at card shops. Guess How Much I Love You? sits here. Love You Forever. They’re often about love and they’re sappy, and kids think, “Ehh.” But the parents love them, or at least the grandparents. And in the middle are the books that have a double appeal, to the child and the adult. Children may like In the Night Kitchen for a slightly different reason. Maybe they’re not seeing the Oliver Hardy characters that you know from Laurel and Hardy. I think Sendak had him crow naked, “Cock a Doodle Doo!” for reasons that would tickle the parent, not necessarily for the kid to get it. That middle ground is where I think the best books are.

Q: You talked about other committee members being concerned about fonts or other elements. Do you think this concern for the double appeal of an exemplary children’s book is what you brought to the selection committee table?

SH: Yes, I think we all have different strengths. There are a couple members of the committee who are very artistic in their sensibilities. They’re looking at the mastery of a technique. Other people are looking at design. I probably am a person for whom that combination of appeal and also the combination of story and art helps me analyze the book, rather than someone who says, “This watercolorist really knows what he’s doing.” If you read my nominations, they look more at the big picture than those of some of the other people, who do talk about art in a way I admire. The first time I was on the Caldecott 25 years ago, one of the committee members went on to become probably the best known authority on art and picture books and the other was a painter, who has since chaired the Caldecott. I learned so much from them, but I also felt like I contributed, perhaps because of my background in early childhood education.

Q: Do you mean you are concerned for how children will experience the books?

SH: Yes, that’s right. The criterion that says remember the child has to be one potential audience for the book certainly colors my view. Some books I really like, and I think they might be good for a specific child audience, not thinking they would be loved by children more broadly.

Q: Do you have books that you consider to be forgotten gems?

SH: There’s an award that Karla Schmit, my colleague here, was just elected to from the Children’s Literature Association. It’s called the Phoenix Award. And it actually goes back 20 years from the date you are on the awards committee and finds books that have stood the test of time but were not honored at the time.

The first time I was on the Caldecott, there was a book that I just loved and it didn’t make it, and I still feel bad about that. I feel the book was brilliant. It’s called The Mountains of Tibet. I think it’s the first children’s book that had reincarnation as its theme, and pulled it off so well. It made me cry the first time I read it, and I’ve probably cried most times that I’ve read it since. It’s a beautiful book, and it ends so powerfully as it comes full circle from this boy who grows to a man, dies, and then is given choices about how to come back. He chooses among planets, among creatures, among cultures, and eventually he elects to be a girl.

You’re not really supposed to talk about why books aren’t selected, only why you liked them, but it was one of those books where he took on something so challenging and I thought he carried it out very well. Ultimately, it might come down to a technique or how something was portrayed, and it’s very difficult to please fifteen people because they have such different interests. But the whole process does change as you talk, and you see your own opinion shifting. You think that this is the book you are backing, but then you get closer to the ballot and you realize this other book has snuck up beside it.

That was when I learned the power of the committee, a lesson I’ve taken to heart. I’m happy to say that Mordecai Gerstein went on to win the Caldecott several years later. The two Honor books the year that Shadow won the Caldecott in 1983 were wonderful and the winner… not so much. But the two people who didn’t win the year of Shadow still have not won, and that is too bad. On the other hand, it is important to remember that books are never created to win awards, but to satisfy something in the writer or illustrator or to find readers for a specific purpose!

Q: What do you think that the educational role of an award like the Caldecott?

SH: I think we’re educating the world about what’s good. Of course, I’ve always said that I don’t want the Caldecott or the Newbery to be the only things that people worry about. The American Library Association’s list of 75 notable books of the year is brilliant. It has the Newbery and Caldecott on it, Coretta Scott King, Geisel, and sixty others. That’s the list that not only educates people about what are good books, but has such a range of wonderful books out there that I think kids need to match up with their interests. I think the Notable Children’s Book list succeeds in doing what I think is very important, to have every child find themselves in a book or to find their interests in a book. And that allows children’s tradebooks to do what they were designed to do, and that is to get kids interested in books and in love with reading. Teaching reading – teaching anything – is a lot easier if you are in love with the medium through which that instruction is going to come.

Q: Maurice Sendak was nominated several times for the Caldecott. What was his contribution to this world of children’s books?

SH: Just listening to all the obituaries in the last few days, he was one of a couple people in the 1960s who really did make some interesting choices. One is that it was really hard to find kids misbehaving and not being punished for it. In Where the Wild Things Are, Max is punished but then he still gets his supper. There was a naughtiness there, and a bit of a darker emotional palette. I think that kids all through the years have realized that there was something deeper in his work than in some. It wasn’t just a list of the things a child did that day as much as it was about turmoil. He really wrote for himself. He wrote for the kid in him. I think a lot of people now in their 40s are really upset. He’s a real hero to them in a way Dr. Seuss was to another group of them.

I think some of his work before he did his own books was great too. He was a brilliant illustrator. And some of the books he did in later years I think were… When he said he didn’t write for children, I think he was proving it because they just weren’t for many children. It was tougher to find that child audience. There’s Brundibár with Tony Kushner about an opera done in the concentration camp. He wrote for himself, for his book gods that he talked about.

I had a chance to meet him, four times in one year. The fourth time I saw him was at an opening of an exhibit of his work at Dickinson College in Carlisle, he said, “Aren’t you tired of coming to hear me talk?” And I only saw him one more time after that. I just took all my Sendak books home yesterday to show my wife. I have an autographed copy of Pierre, the little boy who says, “I don’t care.” It’s a real treasure.