From: Ginny Moore Kruse <gmkruse>
Date: Wed, 07 Mar 2001 11:46:24 -0600

Here's a message for the CCBC-Net community from Marc Aronson, author of the 2001 Sibert Award winner "Sir Walter Ralegh and the Quest for El Dorado" (Clarion Books, 2000). His server was down earlier this week, which is why Marc phoned me and then sent e-mail messages in order to be in touch with you. Marc's e-mail address is below, and so assuming that the server is back in business, you may contact him directly. You may prefer to direct questions or comments for Marc to the entire CCBC-Net community, and so if you do, we'll send them to him. Yes, he is the same person who edited the Sibert Honor Book "Pedro and Me." - Ginny

MESSAGE FROM MARC:

As I understand it, one of the names that was bruited about for the new nonfiction or "informational" award was the Dorothy Briley. From my particular point of view, there couldn't have been a better choice.

I first had the idea to leap across the aisle from editor to author when I wrote a short introduction to David Kherdian's collection "Beat Voices." Writing it made me think about the connections between rebellious art and rebellious adolescents, and I thought there might be a whole book in that. The only person I could imagine publishing such a book was Dorothy, and after one conversation in her office, she gave me the go ahead. After "Art Attack" came out to fine reviews and several end of the year honors but rather modest sales, I pitched another odd topic to her * this time from a pay phone out on the street. She agreed to publish Sir Walter right then and there.

            The kind of nonfiction the Sibert honors requires special vision, instinct, and courage on the part of first editors such as Dorothy, then marketing folks, then all of you * readers, critics, librarians, teachers, parents -- if it is going to flourish. That is because it is very easy to reject all along the line: it is not fiction or even historical fiction, it may not fit neatly in a classroom unit, it may * rather, it should * open up questions not simply answer them. The payoff is that we authors get to experiment with new forms, new ways of writing and thinking, and readers get to explore the world and think about ideas, about history and science and math and nature in new ways.

Maybe we should call the Sibert the "thinking outside the box" award * to use business-speak. Certainly winning it has encouraged me to do just that by making Ralegh the first book in a trilogy that considers the many different forms the American Dream took in the colonial period. And when I speak with, say, Susan Kuklin about the innovative books on artists she is publishing, or with Jim Giblin about his efforts to make sense of Hitler, or with Jeff Kisseloff about his oral history of the 60s, or when I see how Oxford is using top scholars to give young people the history of religion in America, I see many authors and editors who are taking this opportunity to try out new things. Even without her name on the award, I think Dorothy would be pleased.

Marc Aronson, maronson at caruspub.com
  

Ginny Moore Kruse gmkruse at education.wisc.edu Director, Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC) www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/ A Library of the School of Education, University of Wisconsin - Madison 4290 Helen C. White Hall, 600 N. Park Street Madison, WI 53706, U.S.A.

Phone: 608&3721 or 720 Fax: 608&2I33

The Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC) is a noncirculating library for adults

with an academic, professional or career interest in contemporary or historical literature for children and young adults.
Received on Wed 07 Mar 2001 11:46:24 AM CST