What a thrilling ALA Annual conference this year in San Francisco (so we hear...). We hope you were able to pick up a copy of the July/August Horn Book Magazine: Special Issue: Awards. If not, it'll be in your mailbox soon. If not? Subscribe to the Magazine, for goodness sake!

In this Special Issue you'll find: the Newbery, Caldecott, Coretta Scott King, and Wilder awards speeches plus profiles of the winning authors and illustrators; roundups of the year in Newbery, Caldecott, and CSK; our annual Mind the Gap Awards (the books that didn't win); and LOTS more — here's the TOC. It's a good one, if we do say so ourselves.

Here's our plan for this week:

Today we'll post Christopher Myers's stirring Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award speech and 2015 CSK/Steptoe winner Jason Reynolds's profile of his "giant" friend and colleague.

Tomorrow (Tuesday) we'll post Jacqueline Woodson's Coretta Scott King Author Award speech and profile of Woodson by her editor Nancy Paulsen.

Wednesday look for profiles of Newbery winner Kwame Alexander, by Nikki Giovanni no less!, and Dan Santat, by editor Connie Hsu.

Thursday we'll post a profile of Wilder Medal winner Donald Crews by his daughter Nina, herself an accomplished author/illustrator.

Phew! Then we celebrate the Fourth of July. And then we'll give you more. Enjoy!