BOOKS & AUTHORS: FOCUSING ON THE SOUTH CAROLINA CHILDREN’S BOOK AWARD

ONE BOOK AT A TIME

I was just talking about the power of state book awards with Rich, and how once your novel gets on a list, people start seeing the book differently. They take notice. And it feels good to be noticed, doesn't it?

 I mean, I’ve been noticing the nominees on South Carolina’s Children’s Book Award list since Little Joe became a finalist. I want to read them all. 

Many of the titles I’d heard of, but most of them I’d hadn’t. And that’s a shame. 

So, since it’ll be 11 months until we find out who the winner is (the kids choose), I’ve decided to read as many as I can and let you know about them. First up: Because of Terupt by Rob Buyea. (For a full list of the nominees, read here.)

Mr. Terupt’s the kind of person every teacher aspires to be and any fifth grader would want mentoring them in class. I never had a Mr. Terupt, though I did have teachers enthusiastic enough about their subjects for me to glean insight on work ethic and passion--not to mention my penchant for shoes. (My first grade teacher wore a different pair of patent leather pumps each day to match the color of her dress, and I’ve been wearing shiny shoes ever since.)

But Mr. Terupt is different—he’s concerned with drawing out the most from his students and having them build a community within class walls where it’s safe, nurturing and fun—in other words, an environment that fosters learning.

  

We find all this all out not from Mr. Terupt, but through 7 very different student narratives. As an author, I admire Rob (who's taught 3^rd and 4^th graders) for attempting and keeping so many voices going consistently—imagine writing about 7 main characters, and in first person! (Lots of continuity checking and revisions, I’m sure.) Mr. Terupt becomes the catalyst for their words, feelings and changing perceptions, and I really like that idea in a book. Tension builds as each narrator hints about the fateful day when a snowball changes everything and Mr. Terupt becomes the focus, bringing them all even closer.

Rob’s already written the much anticipated sequel to Because of Terupt, so we’ll find out more about the mysterious background behind the inspirational teacher.

Though Sidney Poitier in To Sir, With Love will always be my favorite fictitious teacher of all time, I have a soft spot for Because of Terupt. Rob’s book came out the same year Little Joe did and we were both featured in Random House’s It’s a First spotlight, along with Clare Vanderpool’s Moon Over Manifest. Sound familiar? Clare’s first novel won the Newbery!

The Life of an Author: Book Awards

The Life of An Author

As I was contemplating leaving sports broadcasting back in 1999, a friend of mine took me out to dinner to talk about my options, then told me to hold off on dessert because she had a surprise-- she’d booked a session for me with a clairvoyant.

“You’ll become known for your works of the hand,” the clairvoyant announced, scribbling the air with an invisible pen. “And your books will win awards.”

Now, no matter how skeptical you are about a person’s ability to see the future, when they tell you something you’d like to hear, I, for one, tend to believe it.

Her bold words crossed my mind when my first novel, Little Joe came out in 2010. A year later, the same friend asked me, “No award yet, huh? I guess the clairvoyant must have meant your next book.”

We were nearly into 2012 when I’d heard that Little Joe had won the silver medal in the Austin Waldorf School’s Children’s Choice Award. I was so thrilled and honored, I celebrated for a week, and my colleagues joked that if I could get this excited about a school award, “we may have to sedate you” if I got one that reached state, or even national status.

Then Little Joe made the final list for this year's South Carolina Children’s Book Award. While I didn’t need to be sedated (though I ate several red velvet cupcakes, but they were the miniature kind), I was just as thrilled. And I couldn’t help but think back to that evening with the clairvoyant more than thirteen years ago.

While I’m still new at being an author (I’m working on book number three), I’m convinced that every author wants to have their works be recognized. I think if a children's writer told you that it didn’t matter if their books were considered for the Newbery, the Printz, the Sibert or the National Book Award, they’d be denying you full disclosure.

Having your book considered for an award means several things, and the most important one for me is this: enough people (reviewers, librarians, booksellers, bloggers and teachers) thought so highly of the book that they had it nominated.

This touches me deeply. To have the characters I’ve created, nurtured, and felt every emotion with touch someone else (and more than a few) enough to say to another, “I think you should read this book because it might affect you too,” gives me the added strength and courage to begin another novel. It makes the 300 blank pages before me a little less daunting; the months of research--which often tend to compound rather than contract--telling and re-telling my story until it’s as right as I can make it, worth delving into.

“Wouldn’t it be great if you won, just like the clairvoyant predicted?” my friend said to me.

“It doesn’t matter,” I told her. And I wasn’t lying. What means more to me is being nominated—for that’s a monumental triumph in itself. After that, the territory becomes as murky and unpredictable as a lottery win—the result owed in part to a sprinkling of fairy dust, lucky charms, and numbers. And just as I don’t hinge my actions on the reading of a clairvoyant, I don’t want to count on luck, either. I’d rather keep writing, knowing that my work has touched more than a few people who read thousands of books, than spend time thinking about winning.