For the past 3 years, I have served on the
Children's Literature Council of Southern California Awards Committee. Each November, the Council has a Fall Gala to recognize the 5 award winners and their books. Additionally, there is a special guest keynote.
Yesterday, we held the 51st Gala with special Keynote Speakers Candace Fleming and Eric Rohmann.
Their first joint book project is the picture book
Oh No! (Random House, September 2012)
The Candace and Eric were adorable and funny as they shared the stage and talked about what it was like to work on
Oh No!
Candace began by sharing about how she loves working with white loose-leaf paper and bic pens to write.
Eric followed by talking about how he worked on the illustrations for Candace's manuscript.
I loved listening to Eric share about decisions that he needed to make with certain pages.
Candace finished up by reading
Oh No! which was influenced on a trip to Borneo that the couple had taken.
After the great presentation by Fleming and Rohmann, the Book Awards were announced. Each year, the Awards Committee reviews over 150 books written and/or illustrated by Southern California authors and illustrators and selects 5 books to receive awards. The 2012 committee reviewed books released in the 2011 publishing year. And the winners were:
Outstanding Picture Book
(Candlewick Press, 2011)
Inspiring Work of NonFiction
(Harper Collins, 2011)
Distinguished Work of Historical Fiction
(Henry Holt & Co., 2011)
Myra Livingston Cohn Award for Poetry
Illustrated by Eugene Yelchin
(Henry Holt & Co., 2011)
The Peggy Miller Award for Young Adult
Literature
(Little, Brown, & Co., 2011)
Congratulations to all of the award winners! And thank you Candace Fleming and Eric Rohmann for your amazing presentation.
Fairy Tales: Grimm not Disney
– Most of us have become accustomed to the adaptations Disney has made with the original Grimm Fairy Tales, but pull out the original stories and what you have are tales that were quite dark. What do children gain from these tales? The stories allow children to grapple with
lessons related to concepts such as greed, envy, vanity, abandonment, and more. Also, children get to work through
issues of good versus evil. One of the regular patterns in these stories involve the evil witch dying in the end and the children triumphing over adversity. As Adam Gidwitz mentioned in our informal chat, the happy ending balances out the gruesomeness of the story. 
Spine-tinglers & Campfire Stories
– How many of us recall times when we were children sitting around a camp fire or curled up on the floor in a darkened living room listening to a friend or an adult tell a ghost story or urban legend or other tale designed to scare us? What was the common reactions to these stories, usually lots of screams, grabbing one another, running around, and inevitably laughter followed by the words "tell another one". It is why books such as RL Stine's Goosebumps
series is so popular. It hits us with the right balance of scary and glad that it is happening to someone else. 
Real Issues that are Frightening
– Children of all ages have to go through life challenges that can be difficult
and truly scary. Issues such as divorce,
death of a close family member or a friend, fears of dogs or flying or what's under the bed, and even family abuse may be difficult to talk about. Reading stories about these
circumstances can help children develop ways of dealing or coping with the
situations in their own live and provide them with words in which to discuss
what may be bothering them. One of
my favorites from 2011 is Patrick Ness’ AMonster Calls, which uses a fantastical element of a monster
who arrives at the same time each night as a means for a young teen boy to come
to grips with his mother’s pending death.
