Awards vs. Rewards

These books have won more awards, including Caldecott Honors, Coretta Scott King Awards and Honors, NAACP Image Awards, North Carolina Juvenile Literature Awards, and Arnold Adoff and Lee Bennett Hopkins poetry prizes and awards from the National Council for the Social Studies, International Literacy Association, Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, Cooperative Center for Children’s Books, and Bank Street College of Education. These and other titles have garnered more best-book-of-the year nods than I can name.

The greatest reward, though, is knowing that my books are raising the consciousness of children whom I may never meet. Young readers who are moved to write their own poems and tell the own stories to build a better world.

There are no shiny stickers for that. Just a warm feeling inside. I call it “hope.”