This past Friday, a couple of days before the ALSC...

This past Friday, a couple of days before the ALSC Caldecott/Newbery banquet in Las Vegas, I had the opportunity to address the entire Caldecott Committee, the very people that had picked Journey as one of this year’s honor books. This is what I told them. That four years ago, when I started work on Journey, I was a recent father. A recent homeowner. We’d just gotten back from the car dealership, having put our deposit down on a new car to help cart our infant around town. And a friend called from California to say that the film studio I worked for was suddenly closing its doors. Having just moved back east, I was three thousand miles away from the industry that supported me. So I did what any sane, normal person would do. Over the next two years, I worked on a children’s book.  

In retrospect, it’s easy to see that things worked out just fine. But at the time I had no idea. All I had was faith that it was the right thing to do. And in awarding Journey a Caldecott Honor, the committee has placed their faith now in me; the award gives me a foundation to stand on as I continue to pursue this dream of making stories. Thank you - to the committee, to my fans, and to my family for this amazing gift.