Thoughts on Newbery: The One

We kept waiting for the Big Book.

Every few weeks, as a new shipment of books arrived at each of our different addresses, Susan, Maureen, and I slit open the carton and said to ourselves, Please, let this box contain the One.

The One would be the novel so monumental, so original and vast and funny and tragic, so clearlyimportant, that only an idiot would deny it the Pulitzer Prize.

We wanted a foolproof book, a book about which we could be absolutely certain. Or two such books. Maybe even three....