A Very Fine Lunch

I was having a very nice lunch at the annual conference of the National Council of Teachers of English last weekend in Atlanta. Look, here is the pretty place setting:

It was the Children's Book Awards luncheon, and hundreds of us in the big ballroom of the Omni Hotel had just heard a stirring talk by Sharon M. Draper, winner of the NCTE's 2016 award for outstanding fiction for her novel Stella by Starlight.

The next order of business was the announcement of the 2017 Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction.*

And, oh!--I Dissent: Ruth Bader Ginsburg Makes Her Markwas announced as an Orbis Pictus Honor Book!I was so surprised and excited I forgot to eat my cupcake. (See above, pretty place setting.) Books by two talented friends were recognized with this honor, too: Giant Squid by Candace Fleming, and Olinguito by Lulu Delacre. Congratulations, my ladies!

Here are Candace and I afterwards (also pictured is children's lit professor and blogger Mary Ann Cappiello):

The top Orbis Pictus Award went to Melissa Sweet for Some Writer! The Story of E.B. White. And the 2017 recipient of NCTE's award for outstanding fiction, called the Charlotte Huck Award, was Jason Reynolds, for Ghost. Congratulations, you writers!

* In case you're wondering: "The NCTE Orbis Pictus Award, established in 1989, is the oldest children’s book award for nonfiction. The name Orbis Pictus commemorates the work of Johannes Amos Comenius, Orbis Pictus—The World in Pictures (1657), considered to be the first book actually planned for children." --from the NCTE website