Photo courtesy of Dean Schneider.

I bet I’m the only grown person (near-elderly, actually) to have burst into tears in a Mac Barnett signing line. The book was The Wolf, the Duck, and the Mouse written by Barnett and illustrated by Jon ­Klassen, and it was the inaugural winner of the Robin Smith Picture Book Prize, an award bestowed by the Horn Book’s Calling Caldecott blog. Robin, my wife, had died of cancer in June 2017, at age fifty-seven, and Barnett’s book was a 2017 release, making it eligible for the 2018 Caldecott Medal. I was on the committee that year, and although The Wolf, the Duck, and the Mouse didn’t survive the committee’s final consideration gauntlet, it was one of my own personal favorites. Robin didn’t live to see our choices, made in February 2018, and I didn’t get to go to the award celebrations in New Orleans that June because I was on Little Cranberry Island in Maine, where we had a service and scattered Robin’s ashes on her beloved island.

In announcing the new prize in March of 2018, Julie Danielson wrote:

We here at Calling Caldecott think often of Robin Smith — beloved second-grade teacher, reviewer, and enthusiastic co-author of this blog before her untimely death last June. Her passion for and astute observations of picture books infuse the work we continue to do here, every day. Every. Single. Day. We wanted to do something special to recognize her contribution to our field in general and this blog in particular, in a way that would honor her legacy and celebrate her love of picture books. In that spirit, we hereby launch an award in her memory here at Calling Caldecott: the Robin Smith Picture Book Prize. Every year, we will choose and recognize one picture book we think Robin would have loved. A book that exemplifies what she looked for in picture books, as a devotee, teacher, parent, reviewer.

The Calling Caldecott blog that Robin co-founded in 2011 along with Lolly Robinson is devoted to discussing the best picture books of the year and trying to anticipate what might win the actual Caldecott Medal (see hbook.com/­callingcaldecott). It is just for fun and has no real connection to the American Library Association or its awards, but it does encourage intelligent discussion and informs readers as to what makes a good picture book. Prior to the actual Caldecott results announced at the ALA Youth Media Awards, Calling Caldecott conducts its own mock vote every year, and it is always interesting to see what blog participants like compared to what the actual committee chooses. And after all of the discussions and the voting and the anticipation of the actual Caldecott awards comes the announcement about the Robin Smith Picture Book Prize.

Robin was a longtime reviewer for the Horn Book and had been on the 2011 Caldecott committee, which selected one of my all-time favorite picture books, A Sick Day for Amos McGee. She was a stickler for quality: paper quality, illustrations not being split up in the gutter, a text readable by second graders (i.e., no italics), a story that doesn’t continue on the back endpapers (and, thus, get covered up when the book is processed by librarians), and so forth. But beyond the nitty-gritty elements of a book, the award in her name tried to answer the question: what would Robin have loved to read aloud to her students from her famous rocking chair? As Danielson wrote about The Wolf, the Duck, and the Mouse, “How easily we can envision her yelling ‘CHARGE!’ as she shared that wonderful spread of the duck and the mouse, helmeted with a saucepan and colander, exiting the wolf. We can hear her now — and what a great laugh she had!”

Robin’s award doesn’t come with a cash prize or anything, but it does stir up some extra attention and enthusiasm for a great book. The Wolf, the Duck, and the Mouse had a lot of my emotional backstory attached to it. So, when I stood in Mac Barnett’s signing line at Parnassus Books in Nashville, I had his book and a copy of Danielson’s Calling Caldecott post. When it was my turn, I said hi and tried to explain who I was and why I was there, and I cried. Mac came around the signing table to give me a hug. And now we’re friends. He signed my book, “To Dean, with great admiration. We’re both so honored to have a place on that special bookshelf, in honor of Robin, who we admired and admire so much too.”

The bookshelf Mac referred to was built by a friend. Actually, as I write, I now have two bookcases: tall and narrow, each shelf just big enough to hold one picture book faced out, a growing collection of Robin Smith Picture Book Prize–winning titles, Robin’s legacy. After that inaugural book, I was asked by Calling Caldecott to select the prize-winners. Second on the shelf is Sophie Blackall’s Hello Lighthouse, the 2019 winner. It’s such a Robin book, and it’s hard to fathom that she never got to know it. The stunning cover image of a lighthouse speaks of Robin’s beloved Maine and the lighthouse we would see every summer. (Blackall’s is based on a fictional one in Newfoundland.) This book has proven to be a favorite of children, parents, and teachers alike.

On the third shelf is Elisha ­Cooper’s River, my 2020 selection. Like Hello Lighthouse, it features gorgeous, ­expansive pencil and watercolor illustrations and lively prose, and makes a connection to another place in our lives. Before we started going to Little Cranberry Island (in response to Ashley Bryan’s call to “come see me on my island”), we went to Lake Champlain, so I knew the Adirondack region. This book features a strong woman and her heroic journey on the Hudson River. It’s the kind of book Robin and I looked for, for the young writers’ creative writing camps we taught at each summer: picture books about special people, places, and moments. Roxaboxen, Owl Moon, and When I Was Young in the Mountains were our standards.

I guess you see a pattern here. These are books with texts that beg to be read aloud and illustrations that introduce children to art and, thus, visual literacy.

On the fourth shelf is The Blue House. Here’s what I said in my blog post announcing it as 2021’s winner:

Robin would have loved Phoebe Wahl’s The Blue House. That cover! A scruffy blue house surrounded by beauty. Open the book: a scruffy interior, too. But there is art on the walls, books on the shelves, and a real life going on. It’s a loving twosome of a family, as Leo’s father reads to him, cooks with him, and dances with him. They may not have much, but there’s a real life going on in that old house with the peeling paint, leaking roof, and creaky walls.

Robin was a knitter and quilter and would have adored the book’s colors, textures, and patterns. In fact, I remembered later that Robin had a tradition of giving Phoebe Wahl–designed tea towels to our daughter, Julie, for Christmas each year, and Julie continues to buy them to keep up that tradition. The book’s illustrations are rendered in watercolor, gouache, collage, and colored pencil, and there is a lively interplay of art and text that all great picture books have: “The paint was peeling and the roof was mossy. There were leaks and creaks. And when the wind blew, the whole thing shook. But it was theirs.”

As Hello Lighthouse and River are kindred spirits, so are The Blue House and the following year’s winner, The Ramble Shamble Children, written by Christina Soontornvat and illustrated by ­Lauren Castillo. Like Wahl’s blue house, this dwelling is scruffy and “­ramble shamble” (like my own home, I suppose). These houses are less than perfect but more than able to contain a cozy family life. Though Robin would surely have adored Castillo’s dark-lined impressionistic illustrations of this ­multiethnic family of children, she would also have loved what are not in the illustrations: video games, ­cellphones, ­laptops, hovering parents. It’s just children playing, reading, gardening, feeding chickens, and looking after little Jory playing in the mud. Though all of the prizewinning books on my shelves now show off this award’s shiny gold sticker, it was for The Ramble Shamble Children that Julie, who is an artist, and her designer friend, Cristina Gomez, created the sticker featuring Robin’s favorite flower: lupines, which grow all over on Little Cranberry Island and adorn Robin’s favorite picture book, Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney.

The sixth winner, Jacqueline ­Woodson’s The World Belonged to Us, illustrated by Leo Espinosa, is also an ode to play. It’s set in the seventies, when it was still common for kids to play in the street. And look at this street! Kids running and jumping, shooting bottle caps, playing steal the bacon and kick the can, and racing to the ice-cream truck. School is out and kids felt “Free as sun. Free as Summer.” ­Parents are present, up in windows, occasionally calling down to their kids, until finally: “And one by one, our mothers raised / their windows again, this time to call us home.” It’s a wonderful read-aloud, with a repeating line — “In Brooklyn / in the summer / not so long ago” — that becomes almost a chant. (My four-year-old granddaughter memorized it after hearing the story several times.) This is another book Robin and I would have used in our bookmaking projects with young writers.

And finally, the seventh Robin Smith Picture Book Prize winner, Matthew Cordell’s Evergreen, a story of a squirrel’s heroic journey. Cordell’s nearly wordless Wolf in the Snow won the 2018 Caldecott Medal, the year I was on the committee. Evergreen is long, with enough words for some reviewers to call it an early chapter book. It is divided into six parts, but I still see it as a picture book, simply a longer-than-usual one, with, as in all great picture books, a lovely interplay of text and illustrations and times when the illustrations extend the text. It’s a great read-aloud, too, for one long session or divided into two or three shorter sessions. I have always loved Cordell’s scratchy-looking pen and watercolor illustrations and his ability to imbue characters with so much personality with little adjustments of lines. I love Evergreen precisely because it does have a lot of words and a big story to tell, in an era of minimalist picture book texts. And just as Robin would have yelled “Charge!” during her reading of The Wolf, the Duck, and the Mouse, she would have loved Evergreen, especially with all of its sound effects she could proclaim: SKREEEE-EEE! GROAK! SPROING! GRRRROOOOAAAARRRR!!

The seven books sit here on my desk as I write, the two bookcases in the next room awaiting their return. I am so happy that the Horn Book, via its Calling Caldecott blog, honors Robin Smith’s work as a teacher and writer in this way, and I am thrilled to see this growing ­collection as a well-curated set of books that ­can — ­individually or as a full set — be given away as special gifts to parents, teachers, and librarians, spreading the love of beautiful picture books and encouraging the value of reading aloud. Robin’s gift that keeps on giving.

From the July/August 2024 issue of The Horn Book Magazine: Special Issue: ALA Awards.

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