dizzy

26 Jan 2021 news 0 Comments

thumbnail-8It’s still snowing here in Evanston. I went out earlier today to deliver a birthday gift to Cozbi. She’s still reeling from winning *four* awards yesterday for her two beautiful books EXQUISITE and ME & MAMA! Award days can be difficult and I usually skip the ceremony and avoid social media for a while. Often the same few people win the same few awards, year after year, but when someone so deserving finally has their work recognized—you can’t help but celebrate with and for them. Cozbi is truly one of the most generous people I know (on top of being a phenomenal artist) so it was thrilling to hear her name called again and again. I found out Sunday night that Noa Denmon won the Caldecott Honor Award for her incredible illustrations in A PLACE INSIDE OF ME and couldn’t stop laughing and grinning…I was proud of her but I also felt vindicated. In part because I predicted she would win that exact award back in April, and partly because it felt like a big middle finger to the major review outlets that chose to ignore our book. A friend’s book got SIX starred reviews but he was entirely shut out of the Youth Media Awards; our book got just two reviews and zero stars, but Noa won the Caldecott. So now we have a lovely silver sticker for the cover and we’ll be printing and selling a lot more books. I spent half of yesterday trying to stay on top of my Twitter account; that’s how I found out that SAY HER NAME was a nominee for the YALSA Nonfiction Award. On Facebook a librarian friend told me that my poetry book was also on the Rise list, which features feminist books for 8595C302-8E39-430F-865D-1847EB6E8EF7readers age 0-18. This morning a poet friend messaged me to ask if my publisher had submitted SAY HER NAME to a PA poetry prize…they hadn’t and it looks like we’ve missed the deadline. Sigh. Awards are exciting and can be fun but most books don’t get shiny stickers and even if we blow through this third printing of 40K books, my dragon books will still outsell A PLACE INSIDE OF ME and they haven’t won any awards. Does that mean they’re no good? Of course not. Do kids like the books that win the most awards? Not always. And to even be considered for an award, you have to be able to get published yet the industry continues to exclude most BIPOC kid lit creators. I’m doing a dozen virtual events in the coming weeks and THAT is what really matters—connecting with kids and families and schools. I’m getting one or two requests every day so will have to start turning folks away but a student this morning asked if I had met my goal as a writer, and I have. I write for a living, I spend (part of) my days dreaming, and I’m telling the stories I want to tell. No awards for me this year but I’m happy for my friends, grateful for my own blessings, and ready to keep on fighting for equity in this industry.