Dave Eggers. Photo: Mark Davis.

Dave Eggers believes that true friends exist.

His unwavering faith is carried onto every page of The Eyes and the Impossible, the 2024 winner of the Newbery Medal. Its protagonist, Johannes, is a free dog, a fast dog — oh, what a fast dog — who keeps watch over a sprawling urban park where he lives among his beloved friends. The taciturn and revered trio of bison who invite Johannes to be their lookout in the park, regal and wise seagull Bertrand, and modest Sonja — a one-eyed squirrel — join a dozen other animals who share love and loyalty with Johannes. And when they’re confronted with an unimaginable challenge, the friends’ deep regard for one another is ultimately what will make or break their quest for freedom.

Throughout the book, Johannes’s world is alive not just with these characters, but also with the authentic relationships among them. They stand up, and show up, for one another. They spar and make up. They solve problems together and enjoy life alongside one another: ensuring the prized Equilibrium of their urban park, luxuriating in the beauty of artworks in a museum, and of course, running very hard and very fast. “When I run I pull at the earth and make it turn,” Johannes tells readers on page two. He is as serious about running as he is dedicated to his friends.

Dave’s dedication to his friends — to his community at large — is as deep and wide and fervent as Johannes’s. I have known Dave for eighteen years. In 2006, I began working at 826michigan, a nonprofit that serves young writers ages six to eighteen — part of a network of similar organizations cofounded by Dave and Nínive Calegari. When 826 Valencia was founded in San Francisco in 2002, Dave and Nínive posited a world-changing question: what if adults who have a little extra time could spend some of it with young people who would benefit from a little extra attention? That question has sparked a worldwide movement and has built at least a million friendships in these twenty-two years.

Now there are more than sixty centers inspired by the original 826 Valencia. At all of them, from Melbourne to Dublin to Stockholm to Pittsburgh, adults and young writers and learners meet across homework tables. Yes, geometry is accomplished, and college essays are crafted, but those aren’t the real results. The most revolutionary outcome of these thousands of hours, human to human, is the empathy that develops in both students and adult volunteers. Maybe it’s a stretch to say these relationships are friendships like the ones Johannes has with his cohort, but these are authentic and essential relationships that are transformative. Tutors and young writers learn from and help one another in countless ways. Tutors socialize and dream and write and collaborate with other tutors who become allies, confidants, even lifelong friends.

When alumni from youth writing centers go on to write books (as 826 Valencia alums Javier Zamora and Sally Wen Mao have both done recently), or get doctoral degrees or start their own nonprofits, or whatever they choose to pursue, they don’t always remember the specific assignments they completed with an adult volunteer’s support. They do always remember that someone showed them genuine care. I met Mohammad Jama when he was in sixth grade and trying to stay afloat in algebra, so that he could qualify for the basketball team. He recently ­graduated from Stanford University with an MBA and an MA in education and told me last summer about the moment an 826michigan tutor invited him to be part of a youth publishing project. “She sat down next to me and told me how important it would be to have my voice included. It had never occurred to me before that I would be published in a book.”

That spontaneous revelation from a middle-school basketball player in 2008 is a reflection of the deep belief that all of us who know Dave can see: he understands the mighty force that is putting your faith in other humans.

He does it all the time. 826 ­Valencia was the first nonprofit he helped found, but Dave is also well-known for starting or helping to start numerous other efforts based loosely around a similar idea: humans believing in other humans. ScholarMatch, which he started in 2010, helps prepare and support first-generation college students. Voice of Witness, started in 2004, tells essential social justice stories via oral history. The International Congress of Youth Voices, which I cofounded with Dave in 2018, unites youth activists from around the world. And McSweeney’s, which Dave founded in 1998 and where we publish elegant and unexpected books and magazines, is driven by a deep curiosity about human stories and a relentless mission to honor readers and writers.

That mix of curiosity and humanity is evident in Dave’s visual art, where fans of Johannes and his friends will encounter a disproportionate number of dogs, rabbits, weasels, and other animals. And it’s evident in his writing, where he is on an unflagging chase to surprise his readers and to strike in them the precise emotional spot between universal familiarity and jaw-dropping wonder.

Of course, sometimes Dave is known best, or even known only, as an author of books for adults. Dave has written novels and book-length nonfiction accounts, short stories, long stories, picture books, middle-grade books, essays, reportage, a novel in dialogue, and more. Thankfully for his readers, he is stubbornly attached to the chimerical idea of continually trying something new in his writing. I can scarcely think of a form where Dave has not dabbled, with the notable exception of a tweet, which would be impossible to compose on the duct-taped-together flip phone he carries and uses to communicate. Unafraid, always, Dave writes with a reckless level of optimism that readers will recognize the humanity in all the varied stories he tells — even in his animal characters.

In a career of many honors, from the TED Prize to the Muhammad Ali Humanitarian Award for Education, I know that this distinguished and incredible recognition from the American Library Association and the Newbery committee holds special importance: it means that Johannes’s commitment to his friends will be ­discovered — and I believe emulated — by many thousands of young readers this year and for generations to come.

Dave’s remarkable — and lyrical, very funny — novel is a celebration of ­friendship and art and freedom, all of which we tried to reflect in the book’s unusual plan for publishing. At McSweeney’s we released the book in an elegant deluxe edition with gilt-edged pages and a wooden cover. Simultaneously, Knopf Books for Young Readers published a more affordable — and also very beautiful — hardcover version. In addition to leveraging what our respective publishing companies do best, our friends joined in with a chorus of expertise. Illustrator Shawn Harris and editors Taylor Norman and Amy Sumerton each played crucial early roles as Dave wrote. Steven Malk and his colleagues at Writers House are bringing this book to readers in other languages around the world, and Melanie Nolan, our heroic editor at Knopf, guided the book’s final passage into readers’ hands with deft vision. Barbara Marcus at Random House made it all possible with her incredible expertise. I wish I could name every one of the talented humans at McSweeney’s and Knopf who played their own important role. These dear people came through for us so that Dave’s brilliant words, and Johannes’s indomitable spirit, could be best illuminated. In a recent interview about The Eyes with Taylor Norman, Dave explained that the animals in the book are united by a common purpose. He said, “Nothing is better than that — having something urgent to do, and doing it with the people you love.”

Dozens of books and a few decades into his career, one might imagine that Dave — or anyone — would have lost a touch of the optimism and bravery that’s required to continue writing and publishing in the courageous way he does. Humans fall short in their ­relationships, as do dogs, bison, ­pelicans. Real-life friends are imperfect, and sometimes falter. But I’ve yet to see any of Dave’s faith diminish.

And that’s what it takes to make extraordinary, timeless books: not just a cast of characters, but a good group of people with great faith in one another and the unknown and impossible they might create together.

When Johannes’s new friend Helene, a goat, is taunted by bullies in the park, they ask her who she’s talking to.

“A friend,” Helene said to the voice on the other side of the bush. Then she turned to me and whispered, “Is it okay that I called you a friend?”

And even though she had just said a bunch of things that rattled my mind and caused me some confusion and even hurt feelings, I very much liked Helene and yes, considered her a friend. A new friend, which is a very exciting kind of friend. So in answer to her question, I wanted to say Of course! And Yes! And Your voice fills me with happiness! And You fill me with images of freedom and adventure!

In the years I have known Dave as a writer and a friend, this is a familiar scene. The sudden surge of admiration, the valor and Johannes-like exuberance, and the belief in real, true friends who stand together against awful odds, champion one another’s hopes, and greet life head-on and full of courage, because of who is by their side.

From the July/August 2024 issue of The Horn Book Magazine: Special Issue: ALA Awards. For more speeches, profiles, and articles, click the tag ALA 2024.

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