It was an especially busy, unusually in-person end of 2024 for the Horn Book. Following appreciative receipt of the Mentor Award at the Carle Honors Benefit Gala in NYC, we spent time at the sixteenth annual Boston Book Festival. A road trip to Western Massachusetts led to the R. Michelson Galleries’ 35th Annual Illustration Celebration, on view through January 2025. Prominently featured is The Horn Book Collection: a spectacular selection of original cover art and process work by a dozen creators including David Macaulay (1990), the late Jerry Pinkney (1995), Grace Lin (2022), and Bryan Collier (2023). Next, the English teachers came to town, and we hosted a fantastically engaging Evening of Dialogue, moderated by Roger Sutton, to kick off the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Annual Convention, where we exhibited for the first time. Lastly, thrillingly, and bookending NCTE came the glorious Boston Globe–Horn Book (BGHB) Awards at the Boston Public Library. It was our first-ever ceremony at the library, the first in-person celebration since 2019, and my first time hosting as editor in chief. The specialness of being together can hardly be recaptured — but we try to do our best in this issue.

Beginning on page 20, you can find all the acceptance speeches and judges’ remarks and catch a glimpse of the photo gallery, with pictures taken by Kevin Henegan and continuing on hbook.com. BGHB Awards are usually given in three categories: Picture Book, Fiction, and Nonfiction; and, as we like to say, Poetry tends to jump around. This year’s winners were selected in four categories, including, for the first time, a distinctive Poetry award, to Kin: Rooted in Hope by mother-and-son team Carole and Jeffery Boston Weatherford, whose found poem “Black Means: Roll Call & Rap,” first performed at the Coretta Scott King Book Awards Round Table’s 55th Anniversary Celebration, appears on page 50; and a rare Special Citation, for The New Brownies’ Book by Karida L. Brown and Charly Palmer (see “On the Cover” on page 52). The original Brownies’ Book magazine celebrated its centennial in 2020, and scholars Dianne Johnson-Feelings and Jonda C. McNair delve deeply into its fascinating history and lasting legacy on page 44. And, in fact, many of this year’s BGHB titles touched on themes of memory, ancestry, lineage, and heritage — being from and connected by deep roots and networks. There were repeat winners (Carole Boston Weatherford, Jacqueline ­Woodson, Sydney Smith, Oge Mora) and several first-timers. As author Nicholas Day said: “This is an award with a long tradition of honoring somewhat unusual books, and I am humbled to be part of that tradition.”

We’ve always been proud to champion “somewhat unusual” books. See the starred book selections on page 4 and our Fanfare feature on page 8. Fanfare, our annual best-of list, has been compiled since 1938, and provides an editorially curated, intentionally broad-themed, and idiosyncratic snapshot of that year’s offerings. We’re also excited to be reviewing even more new titles in our monthly Horn Book Herald e-newsletter, which launched in October and features brief, Horn Book Guide–length reviews of books not covered in the magazine. You can subscribe (it’s free!) at hbook.com/newsletters.

Our children’s literature community is vibrant, dynamic — and embattled. After a hundred years, we know book bans and challenges are not new; we also know they’re now highly coordinated, strategic, and specific. The Horn Book’s second hundred years, beginning with this issue, continues our high-minded, long-held, and steadfast mission of heralding the best books in the industry. We’ll keep blowing the horn for fine books for young people — you keep reading, sharing, and ­creating them.

From the January/February 2025 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.

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