The first ALA award that I got was the Geisel honor for Rabbit and Robot, and that was such a crazy experience because I have to admit that I was not paying much attention to any of the awards except for Caldecott. I was just fixated on Caldecott. That’s the one for me. That’s the one I want. Yeah. Caldecott. But so I had never even heard of the Geisel Award.
So when they called my house very, very late at night one night to tell me I had won this award, well, my mother thankfully happened to be at my house and Tom was on the road. My mom answers the question — or I mean I’m sorry. My mom answers the phone and they have this conversation with her about this award, and she’s just like Geisel, Goosel [ph.] G—, what, huh?
You know, and I had no idea what she was talking about. And she gets off the phone, no idea what just happened. But then later I got a text message that said the Geisel Award, but I still didn’t quite realize what it was. So I looked it up online. I’m like oh, that’s nice. and I go to bed and then at two in the morning I just wake up like oh, this was a really big deal. Oh, man. And then I got excited.
But that was just bizarre. And then later El Deafo got not the Caldecott but a Newbery honor, and that was really exciting because I was totally not expecting that either because no graphic novel had ever achieved that. So everybody said oh, it should, but it won’t. Oh, it’s really good, but it’s not going to go there.
So this committee really — the Newbery committee really took a leap here, and that was just amazing, an amazing experience. And what it’s done to me is it has filled my email inbox up to massive amounts, just more people wanting to have conversations and hoping that I might come visit their schools and do presentations and stuff, to which I would love to say yes to all of them, but that’s just not — there’s not enough time.
And so that’s been the main change, but I was telling someone earlier today it feels like all of that happened to somebody else, that it’s just a separate — even the book El Deafo now feels like it’s somebody — it all happened to somebody else. It’s my book, but you can sort of be jealous of a book, sort of like well, what if I never write a book that’s as well-received as this one? And that might very well happen.
And you kind of — you start to see it as its own entity, and that’s sort of how it felt with the medals too, that it’s just this ethereal thing that really did happen to somebody else. But a total honor. I mean if anybody had said to me oh, you’ll be recognized for your writing, I would have just laughed in their face, you know. Caldecott. So, that was kind of neat that I had come to this as an illustrator but have come out of it as almost more recognized as a writer. That’s kind of neat.
