In honor of our centennial, we asked interns from over the years to share their reminiscences.

I didn’t know about the Horn Book before I saw the internship posting during my final semester of my master’s program in the spring of 2022. But I had always had a dream of working in publishing — for an English major undergrad, it’s practically a requirement — and it hadn’t panned out the first time around when I tried to Make It in New York. I thought the magazine sounded cool, and I sent out an application as part of a batch of many other publishing-related applications. Getting the email request for an interview from Shoshana Flax opened up this beautiful corner of the world of publishing to me. Most surprisingly to me, my internship was fun. There were days of formatting reviews and entering minutiae into the database, but everyone was really nice, and we really got to read books! For pay! I got to revisit favorite books — researching first edition Newbery-winner covers for Grace Lin’s gorgeous May/June 2022 issue cover took me right back to the storytime rug in my elementary school classrooms — and I met so many wonderful new characters — Merci Suárez, Link and Hud, Daunis Fontaine. Plus, I met the wonderful people who make up the Horn Book team, people who love to read and talk about reading and who see how important reading has always been and will always be for young people.

In between my internship and leaping out of my chair at the opportunity to work full time at the Horn Book, I went back to tutoring in a high school. Some of the teenagers I worked with loved to read, and they introduced me to new books and genres. Many did not have a lot of reading experience — it was harder for them to see the appeal. When I read YA now, I often imagine the range of students that I worked with. Would they have seen themselves represented in this book? Does this dialogue sound like something they would say in real-life (either to me, or when they thought I couldn’t hear them across the room)? Would they dread having to read this as an assignment or be delighted to find something that might stick with them well beyond high school? Although I don’t have plans to go back to work in a high school setting, I keep a little list of the books that pass these tests, that really stand out, just in case. Because high school — no surprise — remains hard to survive, but I continue to argue that it’s a lot easier with the company of good books. At the Horn Book, I get to work with other people who share my belief in this idea, as well as a hundred (at least) other reasons to champion books for young people, and that is truly a privilege.

For more Horn Book centennial coverage, click here.