 |
CBC Home
CBC
Publications
How to
Order
Submission
Guidelines
Awards
Young
Reviewers
Teen List
Best of
the Best
Related
Links
Contact
CBC
| |
This Year's Awards Ceremony | Acceptance speeches | Past Award Winners (1943-2007)
About Our Awards
____________________________________________________________
Click here to read 2006 Awards Ceremony Acceptance Speeches
Click here to read 2005 Award Ceremony Acceptance Speeches
Click here to read 2004 Award Ceremony Acceptance Speeches
____________________________________________________________
2007 Award Ceremony Acceptance Speeches:
____________________________________________________________
The 2006 Josette Frank Award
(Fiction)Shared by:
Clementine
By Sara Pennypacker, illustrated by Marla Frazee
(Hyperion Books for Children)
And:
The Manny Files
By Christian Burch
(Atheneum Books for Young Readers)
Speech by Christian Burch:
The last time I spoke like this in public I was five years old and it was at a Bible School program. I had one line, "God loves cheerful givers." I practiced it all week long, in front of the mirror, in different voices, emphasizing different words. On the night of the program, when it was finally my turn I leaned into the microphone and said, "God loves Chicken Livers!"
I'll try to do better today.
When I was little, my Mom used to act like a zombie and chase my sister and I up and down the stairs and all around the house threatening that if she caught us, she'd put us in the attic. We ran from her because we knew it was true. When she caught us, she'd drag us toward the big attic door while we screamed and kicked in terror. Luckily, we never actually made it into the attic. We usually got as far as the attic door with Mom trying to pry our fingers off of the door frame . . . and then she'd quit . . . just in time. My Mom always knew right when to stop . . . usually when my sister was holding the front of her pants and jumping up and down or when I was laughing my high-pitched hyena laugh, a sure sign that the fun was about to turn into hysterics, and not the good kind.
My Dad wasn't so innocent either. Every morning, he'd show up in my doorway to wake me up for school by singing, "Schoolboy! Time to wake up and go to school so you can learn something so you can grow up and be somebody!" Then, he'd throw his head back and laugh as I stuffed a pillow over my head so that he wouldn't hear my cuss words. Every day he did this. Then, he'd move onto my sister's door, "Schoolgirl!" He still does this when we come to visit.
This is what growing up with my parents was like. Thank goodness!
Of course our lives weren't always candy corn and marzipan, there were hard times, annoying times, and sad times, but because our house was playful and fun, laughter quickly followed any tears. The most difficult time in my life was coming out to my parents at the age of 25. I was terrified and told them through sobs. A few months later while visiting home, my mom told me that I was "opening up her world." On the same trip while shopping in Williams Sonoma, my Dad spotted a sales clerk at Williams Sonoma and said, "How about him?" He was very proud that he could spot potential dates for me. I didn't point out that locating a gay man in William Sonoma did not really take much skill.
So you see, some might think that writing The Manny Files was much cheaper than going to a therapist, but the truth is that growing up and learning how to laugh at myself made me realize that we are never too old to be playful. We are never too old to have water fights. And we are never too old to tickle each other. I would love to say that I sat down and brilliantly used my imagination to write about the Dalinger family . . . but the truth is that I mostly used my memory . . . of my family and of the families I have worked with as a male nanny. My biggest hope is that The Manny Files reminds parents to have fun with their children and reminds children that embarrassing moments make for the best stories.
I am very proud that the Bank Street College of Education is honoring The Manny Files as a positive book where the characters grow emotionally and morally. It shows me that the world is ready for all kinds of characters.
Thank you very very much.
____________________________________________________________
The 2006 Flora Stieglitz Straus Award
(Nonfiction)For:
Freedom Walkers:
The Story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott
by Russell Freedman
(Holiday House)
Speech by Russell Freedman:
When I was a young man just back from the Korean War, I took a Greyhound bus trip across the United States. Greyhound was advertising a deal that was hard to resist: unlimited travel across the country, stopping over wherever and whenever you wished, as long as you kept going in the same direction and completed your trip within three months. The price for this adventure was $49. Well, I could afford that, I figured, so I set out from San Francisco, my hometown, planning to visit friends along the way until I reached my final destination, New York.
I remember when the bus I was riding crossed the Texas state line near El Paso and pulled into a rest stop. All along, across California, Arizona, and New Mexico, black passengers getting on and off the bus had seated themselves at random, wherever they pleased. But crossing into Texas was entering a different world. The café at the rest stop had a sign reading "White Passengers Only." Around the corner, crowded into the back of the restaurant kitchen, some tables were set aside for, as the sign announced, "Colored Passengers." And, of course, toilets and drinking fountains were also marked "White" or "Colored."
That was my first experience with overt, legal racial segregation as practiced in the Deep South. I had grown up in San Francisco, where schools and other public facilities were racially integrated, and, as far as I knew, always had been. And I had just returned from a shooting war in Korea, where my unit, the 2nd Infantry Division, along with the rest of the U.S. Army, was racially integrated - thanks to a landmark desegregation order by President Harry Truman. Now, at this sunbaked Greyhound rest stop in Texas, I saw for the first time signs mandating strict racial separation. And when we all piled back onto the bus, the black passengers, who earlier had chosen their seats at random, obediently took seats in the back.
Later, when I stopped over in New Orleans, I ventured out to see the town and boarded a city bus. The seats up front were crowded, so I went to the back of the bus and sat down. Pretty soon I was aware of people glaring at me. And even though there were empty seats around me, black passengers, unwilling to sit beside me, were standing in the aisle. That's when I realized I was occupying a seat in the colored section. My first reaction was defiance. I would stay put. But this was New Orleans, the Deep Deep South, and I was a foreigner, an interloper. Assailed by a jumble of emotions - confusion, anger, embarrassment - I rose abruptly from my seat, moved uneasily into the aisle, and jumped off the bus at the next stop. Standing there on the street corner, I began to understand how racial discrimination humiliates both the victim and the perpetrator.
After I reached New York, news of the Montgomery bus boycott - which had been going on for several months - began to appear in the papers and on TV. And that's when I first heard, along with the rest of the world, the names Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King.
The Montgomery bus boycott marked the beginning of what we now recognize as the modern civil rights movement. I've learned that one of the most effective ways to write history is to focus on a single dramatic event, a self-contained story, so to speak, that in itself illuminates a larger historical era or theme. Marian Anderson's Lincoln Memorial concert in 1939 is one example. The Montgomery bus boycott is another. It offers a truly dramatic story with a beginning, a middle, and a triumphant ending. And it has a wonderful cast of characters - not only those iconic figures Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, but thousands whose names have been lost to history - maids, laborers, teachers, students, cooks, and others - who rose above the safe routines of their daily lives in the face of threats, firings, arrests, and violence, reminding us that history is made not only by charismatic heroes, but by ordinary people struggling to overcome injustice and demand their rights.
I am pleased and honored this morning to accept the Flora Stieglitz Straus award for my book. I've been an Upper West Side neighbor of the Bank Street College for many years, and I can't begin to count the number of times I have paused to examine the books displayed in the bookstore window as I made my way up or down Broadway. That, for me, adds to the pleasure of this event.
I thank you all very much.
| |
