Sunday, June 28, 2015.
San Francisco, California.
The day dawns in the afterglow
of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision
to make gay marriage a constitutional right in all states.
It's not yet 7 a.m.: People line up on Market Street
awaiting the start of the Gay Pride Parade.
Hundreds of librarians, publishers, authors and artists
make their way to the Marriott Marquis for
the Coretta Scott King Awards Breakfast.
Hundreds lift ev'ry voice and sing James Weldon Johnson's anthem.
Jason Reynolds leads us in a second anthem:
"You can't see it/ It's electric!
You gotta feel it/ It's electric!"
Says the winner of the John Steptoe Award for New Talent
for When I Was the Greatest.
"It's like a Bat signal," Reynolds says of "The Electric Slide,"
"It frees you.
Everyone has their own flavor; that's what we're doing up here."
His mother worked her way up
from a 15-year-old in the mailroom in 1963
to the executive office, "first woman, first black, first everything,"
says Reynolds.
Christian Robinson, CSK Illustrator Honor winner for Josephine
brings author Patricia Hruby Powell, a ballet dancer,
onto the floor with him.
They start making Josephine Baker's moves.
"If I'd known, I'd've brought my band with me," says Frank Morrison,
CSK illustrator Honor winner for Little Melba and Her Big Trombone.
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| An impressive huddle at the Newbery-Caldecott banquet (l-r.): Donald Crews, Christopher Myers, Nina Crews, Kwame Alexander, Nikki Giovanni and Edwidge Danticat. | |
Kwame Alexander, CSK Author Honor winner for The Crossover,
speaks of the close community and family,
the invisible current
pulsing among the community on the stage.
Sometimes you "just need a break," says Alexander,
"from writing windows and painting mirrors."
He recalls a fish fry at Jacqueline Woodson's home
with Reynolds and Christopher Myers and Rita Williams-Garcia.
"I want to create a world that knows better
and does better," says Alexander.
Marilyn Nelson, CSK Author Honor winner for How I Discovered Poetry,
also speaks of "firsts":
her mother in 1954
teaching all white children as a black woman,
her father a Tuskegee Airman.
She wrote her book of poetry as
"an invitation to enter the family I grew up in."
Kekla Magoon wrote her CSK Author Honor book
How It Went Down
in response to the murder of Trayvon Martin.
"I'd just about given up on the world,"
says Christopher Myers
in his CSK Illustrator Award Acceptance speech
for his artwork in Misty Copeland's Firebird.
He speaks of a boy who delivered bread
by bicycle across a bridge over the river Nile
where a car bomb exploded;
a 10-year-old girl who sews tags into uniforms
for Western children and longs to go to school.
And then he speaks of Misty Copeland,
how her body tells stories of
"not only the lithe little girl from Los Angeles
discovering dance in a Boys & Girls Club
but the mythical Firebird and Stravinsky
and the Ballets Russes."
At this first Coretta Scott King Award Breakfast
"without Pops,"
Christopher Myers spoke of Walter Dean Myers
and his belief in "the magic" of the rewrite.
Not just the words on the page
but "rewriting the world."
And Copeland's next milestone was to come two days later:
First African American dancer to reach
principal status in the American Ballet Theatre.
"We are almost there," says Jacqueline Woodson
in her Coretta Scott King Author Award acceptance speech
for Brown Girl Dreaming,
remembering what it was like on tour in Vancouver
to be the only African American
in an "otherwise incredibly diverse room."
She speaks of what the Coretta Scott King Honor Award
had meant to her in 1995 for I Hadn't Meant to Tell You This,
and in 1996 for From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun,
the CSK Committee letting her know they "had my back."
And the committee's refusal to cross a picket line in 2001
instead choosing an alternate place to hold a tea,
let Woodson know "I had found my people.
In the way of our people always
finding a way to make a way out of no way."
She threads together the people on the stage,
Rudine Sims Bishop and Deb Taylor,
winner of the CSK Virginia Hamilton Award,
Dr. Henrietta Smith in absentia but always present,
and the spirits gone on: Walter Dean Myers,
Virginia Hamilton, Tom Feelings, John Steptoe,
each of whom "forever changed my life."
And after the singing and dancing and embracing
and celebrating and applause,
we walk into the streets
where there is more embracing and parading
and celebrating and applause.
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| The CSK celebrants mix it up (l-r, back row): Kwame Alexander, Kekla Magoon, Jason Reynolds, Christian Robinson, Jacqueline Woodson, Christopher Myers; Marilyn Nelson (second from l., hiding) and Frank Morrison (4th from l.) Photo: Justin Chanda | |
It lasts long into the night
when Dan Santat, in his Caldecott Award Acceptance speech
for The Adventures of Beekle,
admits, "It is perhaps a curse that I want far more
than what I am capable of"
and conceived of his speech as a "love letter"
to his two sons, "witnessed proof that I am capable
of creating something perfect in the world."
Kwame Alexander began the day
with themes of family and community and
the work to be done
and closes the day
with themes of family and community and
describing his calling in his Newbery Award Acceptance speech
for The Crossover, a novel in verse:
"Poetry swooped down, grabbed me by the arms,
lifted me up. It was definitely a calling....
You have to answer the call."
And Donald Crews in his acceptance speech
for the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award
takes us down the road, to a fork
and we take the fork with him,
the journey.
With his wife, Ann Jonas, whose loss is still fresh,
with his daughters, Nina and Amy,
We Read: A to Z,
we count Ten Black Dots
we take a Freight Train
we visit Bigmama's.
We spend the day and night in celebration.
And afterward there is silence.
"Even the silence has a story to tell you,"
writes Jacqueline Woodson
in Brown Girl Dreaming,
"Just listen. Listen."
In the growing silence, we know
there is work to be done.
And we also know that we in these rooms
on these streets
in this city
are reading and writing and illustrating and recommending
and passing along these books, hand to hand,
bringing our hands together in applause
raising our hands to say "yes"
We want to answer the call
We want to do the work
We want children
to want to read
to want to write
to want to draw
to see themselves
to share themselves
to be a part of
rather than apart from
to feel the electricity here. Now.
From San Francisco to New York City
from sea to shining sea.
--Jennifer M. Brown