But she also has a vanity full of mysterious perfumes, lipstick as red as rubies, and memories as sharp and painful as the day they were made. She serves up fish for breakfast, buggy eyes and all. Instead she sips an intoxicating beverage from a glass bedecked with a spider. She also does not hug, or kiss, or chase her great-grandchild for fun. “Great-grandmother Nell is scary.” You got that right, kid. Nelson deftly encapsulates a woman’s personality and lifetime of experiences in a scant 32 pages. Tackling the almost nonexistent subcategory of grouchy great-grandparents, Ms. All these thoughts were in my head recently when I read the remarkable Don’t Call Me Grandma by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson. Don’t believe me? Read the original manuscript of Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are where he spells everything out for the reader.
A good picture book shows but doesn’t tell. Just the same, I hope that if anything comes out of this surprise award it’s a newfound appreciation for the picture book’s art of restraint. Are we, as a people, less tolerant of loquacious books? Considering the fact that a book with 592 pages was a runner-up, I think we’re doing just fine in terms of wordy titles. For that matter, there was a fair amount of speculation about what it meant for children’s literature in general. After its win there was a fair amount of speculation about what precisely the Newbery committee was trying to say with their award. Which is to say, a picture book was declared the best-written work for children between the ages of 0-14. In 2016 a picture book won a Newbery Award. The Pennsylvania native is currently the young adult librarian at a public library in New Mexico, where she lives with her husband, Drew, and two cats. Her memberships include the SCBWI, the American Library Association and the Association for Library Service to Children. She holds master's degrees from The Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College, Vermont, and from the University of Pittsburgh School of Library and Information Science. Vaunda has been a teacher, newspaper reporter, bookseller, school librarian, and twice a member of the Newbery Award Committee. In addition, Vaunda's poetry has been published in Cricket and Cicada magazines. Almost to Freedom, her most recent title, received a Coretta Scott King Honor for illustration in 2004. Mayfield Crossing won the Georgia Children's Book in 1995, and Beyond Mayfield received a 1999 Parents' Choice Gold Award. Vaunda's first book, Always Gramma, was selected by the Children's Book Council as a Notable Children's Trade Book in the Field of Social Studies. My mother found my name in a novel she was reading." The children's librarian and author says, "It was destined from the day I was born. Vaunda Micheaux Nelson loves bringing books and children together and feels lucky to have two careers that foster this.
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