One and Done: Serving on ALSC Committees and Never Coming Back

Eleven years ago I served on the Newbery committee that would award Susan Patron’s The Higher Power of Lucky one of the loftiest children’s literary awards in the land. Ten years later I was tapped to serve as the chair of the Arbuthnot Lecture committee.  Why the gap in time?  In my particular case it had a fair amount to do with the fact that I’ve been publishing books for kids. Not always knowing when one book or another would hit the American marketplace I eschewed committee work. Then in...