Great books win Newbery, Caldecott

By Karen MacPherson

Scripps Howard News Service

DALLAS — A wordless story of a dog and her beloved ball and a hilarious historical tale of a boy’s unforgettable summer have captured the most prestigious awards in the world of children’s literature.

“A Ball for Daisy” (Schwartz & Wade/Random House, $16.99, ages 3-6), written and illustrated by Chris Raschka, won the 2012 Caldecott Medal. The award is given annually by the American Library Association (ALA) to the best-illustrated children’s book of the previous year.

“Dead End in Norvelt” (FSG, $15.99, ages 10-14), written by Jack Gantos, was awarded the 2012 Newbery Medal, given by the ALA to the best-written children’s book of the previous year.

The awards were announced on Jan. 23 at the ALA’s midwinter conference in Dallas. The Caldecott and Newbery are regarded as the “Academy Awards” of the children’s-book world.

Besides fame, the awards bestow fortune on the winning authors and illustrators. Just after the awards were announced, “A Ball for Daisy” ranked 22,059 in sales of all books — for kids and adults — on Amazon.com. By the end of the day, it was No. 13. It was a similar story for “Dead End in Norvelt,” which zoomed from 27,051 in Amazon sales to No. 18.

Here’s a closer look at the winning books and their creators:

Chris Raschka was worrying about whether he had lost his cellphone on Monday morning, Jan. 23, as he walked the 14 blocks from his Manhattan home to his studio. Entering the studio, Raschka was relieved to see his cellphone.

Just then, it rang, and Raschka, 52, learned from Caldecott committee members that he had won his second Caldecott Medal. (He first won the Caldecott Medal in 2006 for “The Hello, Goodbye Window,” written by Norton Juster.)

In an interview with School Library Journal, Raschka said he had been “blissfully ignorant” that the winners of this year’s medal were to be announced that morning.

“I’m totally amazed,” he said. “Sometimes I’m aware when this is going on. But being unaware is sometimes a good thing.”

Raschka has written and/or illustrated dozens of books, but “A Ball for Daisy” is his first wordless one. It was inspired by an incident in which a dog destroyed the favorite ball of Raschka’s then-4-year-old son.

Raschka decided to use a canine as the star of his book to give it more universal appeal, and he determined to make it wordless so that it could be accessible to nonreaders.

As the book opens, Daisy is joyfully playing with her red ball — rolling it, pushing it and even sleeping with it on a green-striped couch. When she and her owner head to the park, however, another dog takes the ball away and, playing roughly, pops it.

A grief-stricken Daisy slowly leaves the park with her owner — head down, body dragging. At home, Daisy lies alone on her green-striped couch, clearly bereft. Then one day, Daisy’s owner brings her back to the park, where the other dog’s owner hands Daisy a new — blue — ball.

Raschka’s loose-lined illustrations teem with emotion, clearly evoking how Daisy’s joy turns to sadness and finally to excitement over a new ball. We never see a full image of Daisy’s owner; we rarely see her as Raschka focuses his artwork on Daisy and her emotions.

“Chris Raschka’s deceptively simple paintings of watercolor, gouache and ink explore universal themes of love and loss that permit thousands of possible variants,” said Caldecott Medal Committee Chair Steven L. Herb in explaining his panel’s choice.

Jack Gantos, meanwhile, was planning to spend Monday at his local library in Boston working on his next book. He was just feeding his cat before heading out the door when the phone rang and Newbery committee members told him that he had won the 2012 Newbery Medal for “Dead End in Norvelt.”

“I was trying not to overthink it,” Gantos told School Library Journal about the possibility of winning. “You try and compartmentalize this kind of day. And my thought was, just stick with the plan.”

In “Dead End in Norvelt,” Gantos, 60, brilliantly pairs fiction and autobiography as he tells the story of an 11-year-old boy named Jack Gantos who is grounded by his parents in the summer of 1962. With nothing to do but read his favorite series of biographies, Jack is happy to help old Miss Volker, the town’s increasingly arthritic historian, type obituaries of Norvelt residents.

Jack learns about history and gritty determination from Miss Volker, who refuses to leave the town founded by Eleanor Roosevelt until she has written the obituaries of all of the original Norvelt residents — assuming she lives that long. Meanwhile, Jack is trying to figure out how to control his copious nosebleeds, which begin at the earliest sign of conflict, and deal with the low-level war between his parents over whether to leave Norvelt.

Overall, Gantos has written a book that is a rare find: history combined with humor. Young readers will laugh out loud at some scenes, such as when Jack thinks that Miss Volker has melted her hands, and they’ll learn some fascinating history from the newspaper accounts that Jack types for Miss Volker.

Newbery Medal Committee Chair Viki Ash describes the book as both a “screwball mystery” and an “achingly funny romp through a dying New Deal town.”

“Who knew obituaries and old-lady death could be this funny and this tender?” Ash added.

The author won a Newbery Honor, a runner-up award for the Newbery Medal, in 2001 for “Joey Pigza Loses Control.” His other award-winning books include an autobiographical book for teens, “Hole in My Head.”