It’s wonderful to win the Newbery, it changes your life and it changes your writing life as well. I’ve talked to other Newbery winners and they haven’t all had the same experience. Mine was after I wrote it, the next story I cowered because I thought oh, I thought that the Newbery Committee was looking over my shoulder.
I go, well I can’t let that line go through and I can’t let that line go through and it was really paralyzing me and it took me months and months and months to get over that feeling and just be able to loosen up and write. But it gives you great visibility, your readership jumps enormously.