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Newbery Medal acceptance.

Article Excerpt
I have lived a life of books. Family tradition says that at the age of five I breathlessly announced, "I can read! I can read!" Perhaps the book was The Poky Little Puppy. Maybe it was The Story of Ferdinand. Both were books I adored.

By the time I left high school I had already decided to be a writer. When assembling our senior yearbook (my school was so small we only needed a year-pamphlet), classmates used Shakespeare to define me by placing right next to my graduation picture Prospero's words: "[I was a] poor man, [but] my library / Was dukedom large enough." Indeed, I worked in libraries some twenty-five years.

Now, at the age of sixty-five, instead of contemplating retirement, I'm receiving from you the honor of this award. In so doing you have energized me, deepened my commitment--and alarmed me. For, once the immediate hubbub of the announcement subsided, all I could think was, "Oh my God! The next book better be really good!"

For most of us who write novels for young people, to win a Newbery is manifestly the summit of achievement. Its brightness seems to illuminate all of one's work. Indeed, the award is described as honoring the "most distinguished" work of children's literature.

I hope you won't think me churlish when I say in all honesty I am not comfortable with that word, most. Here tonight are many writing colleagues of mine who, I assure you, write as well as if not better than me. The notion that my book is better than the work of Nancy Farmer, Patricia Reilly Gift, Carl Hiaasen, Ann M. Martin, or Stephanie S. Tolan is doubtful. No question, there are kids out there who will like their books better than mine. More power to them. The democracy of reading taste, particularly among the young, is something I applaud. Let's not forget that enduring books such as Charlotte's Web, Tuck Everlasting, and Hatchet did not win a Newbery. Nor have extraordinarily gifted writers like Walter Dean Myers won this award. Nor has the children's own choice (if one looks at bestseller lists), the nefarious Lemony Snicket, won this award. In the past year the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award and the National Book Award each selected different books. And what about all those state awards? To all this I say, Bravo!

In a culture that is forever proclaiming (and selling) this or that as the best ever, a culture that promotes unanimity and conformity, I say, let us celebrate diversity of every kind. Let us revel in the fact there is so much good writing for young people that we cannot agree on a single best book. Let us celebrate how rich in talent we are. Why look back to a golden age of writing for young people when we are living in one right now?

We writers cherish the award because no one sits down to write a Newbery book. Indeed, no one deserves to win in a field where so many fine writers write so many fine books. It comes as a...

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