From: Kathleen Horning <horning>
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 1995 13:30:00 -600

I served on the USBBY committee that chose Virginia Hamilton as the U.S. nominee for the Hans Christian Andersen Medal back in 1992. As a result, I was immersed in Virginia Hamilton's work and had many opportunities to talk to people about her books. For years, her books have been criticized as being "inaccessible" or "too hard to understand" but around this time I began to notice a change in the public opinion about her work. I was discussing this phenomenon with a colleague who teaches children's literature in the School of Education at a large university in a neighboring state, and she said she was experiencing the same thing: after years of defending VH books, all of a sudden they seemed quite popular and everyone was not only able to understand them but eager to read them! She theorized that the change could be attributed to the popularity of Toni Morrison -- that many adults who had refused to try to read Virginia Hamilton's books had since read Toni Morrison and had liked them. They were then "open" to trying books by Virginia Hamilton. "What's the big deal about Toni Morrison?" someone asked. "Virginia Hamilton's been writing books like that for 25 years!"
Received on Fri 16 Jun 1995 02:30:00 PM CDT