The eighth annual winner of the Robin Smith Picture Book Prize, honoring late Calling Caldecott cofounder Robin Smith, is Knight Owl and Early Bird, written and illustrated by Christopher Denise.
Robin Smith was the best teacher I ever knew. A nationally known writer and children’s book committee member, she was committed to books as the heart of her teaching. She read hundreds of picture books every year in her second-grade classroom and always had a novel going, too — The Wonderful Wizard of Oz; The Tale of Despereaux; The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. Her students memorized great poetry and recited for other classes. Her students learned to love books, unaware of another gift they were receiving from Robin, best stated in William Zinsser’s Worlds of Childhood: The Art and Craft of Writing for Children (1990): “This gift — to get good language into the ear of children at a very early age — is what children’s literature has in its power to bestow...to write well it is necessary to grow up hearing how other people have written well: to get into one’s metabolism the grandeur, the playfulness, and the narrative strength of the English language.” This gift Robin’s students learned from her simply by sitting in a semicircle at her feet as she read from her rocking chair, which had been beautifully painted by Alabama folk artist, Chris Clark, after he visited her classroom. Students learned a lot, but Robin wasn’t teaching; she was simply sharing books she loved, but knowing full well the value of reading books to children.
Robin and I were married for almost thirty-six years. She died in 2017 after a two-year struggle with cancer that ended her twenty-four-year era of teaching second graders, whom she regarded as “my people.” She was deeply committed to books and children, and that passion for children’s books is what endures through the Robin Smith Picture Book Prize, established by The Horn Book via the Calling Caldecott blog, cofounded by Robin and the Horn Book's former creative director, Lolly Robinson, in 2011. It is not an award just for the best picture book of the year; it is a prize that honors both the writing and the illustrations of one superb picture book each year. It has to be a book that I can picture Robin reading from that rocking chair — smile on her face, glint in her eye — launching forth with a book she loved, a book she had practiced reading so she could do it justice in front of her students.
The book I have selected from the best of the best picture books of 2024 is Christopher Denise’s Knight Owl and Early Bird, a follow-up to the Caldecott Honor Book Knight Owl. There were other picture books I liked a lot this year, too, but I kept coming back to Knight Owl and Early Bird. The writing and illustrations are superb, it’s the book I chose most often when reading aloud to young children, and it’s the book I’m most excited to place on my bookshelf, faced out, with previous winners. Martha Parravano’s review in the January/February 2025 issue astutely analyzes the elements of the book, so I’ll simply say why the book merits this particular prize. I always try out my choices for the prize by reading them aloud to young children. (I hope members of the actual committee do this, too; I did when I was on the 2018 committee.) I’ve read Knight Owl and Early Bird to friends’ daughters aged two and four, other friends’ sons aged three and five, and four first-grade classes. A winner every time. First of all, many kids knew Knight Owl and were, thus, predisposed to like this companion. Second, what an engaging cover! Third, there’s so much going on in the illustrations, and kids love noticing things. Little children all know the feeling of wanting to be bigger, of feeling more important, of wanting a big friend and hero, so they can identify with our little protagonist, Early Bird. When I start to read Knight Owl and Early Bird, I say to kids, “What sound does an owl make? What sound does a wolf make? Okay, later in the book, when I pause and point to you, that’s your time to make some noise!” This encourages eager anticipation, rapt attention, and great fun playing their roles. Also fun is what Martha Parravano calls the “barrage of different font sizes and styles” when Early Bird is speaking to Knight Owl. This cues the reader to be a chatterbox like Early Bird and read in a fast, breathless pace, with nary a pause, and emphasizing those italicized words. Your audience will love it. Robin would have performed this so well.
So, Knight Owl and Early Bird joins the Robin Smith Picture Book Prize library, which I see as a carefully curated collection of great picture books, now eight in number, which, individually or as a whole set, make a nice gift to anyone wanting to give the gift of reading. I adorn my prize winner each year with a beautiful gold sticker created by my writer/editor/artist daughter, Julie, and her designer friend Cristina Gomez. The sticker features lupines, Robin’s favorite flower, which grows all over her beloved Little Cranberry Island in Maine and adorns her favorite picture book, Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney.
Readers interested in learning more about this prize and the previous winning books can read my article in the July/August 2024 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.
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