Congratulations to Lemony Snicket, Honored with the 2014 Charlotte Zolotow Award for Outstanding Writing in a Picture Book
The Dark, written
by Lemony Snicket and illustrated by Jon Klassen, is the winner of the
seventeenth annual Charlotte Zolotow Award for outstanding writing in a picture
book. The award is given by the Cooperative Children's Book Center, a library of
the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and will be
presented in Madison this spring.
According to the Cooperative Children's Book Center's blog, "Lemony Snicket’s playfully serious picture book
personifies one of the most common fears of childhood. Laszlo doesn’t
like the dark, which lives in his basement during the day. 'At night, of course,
the dark went out and spread itself against the windows and doors …' One
night, the dark, which has a voice “as creaky as the roof of the house, and as
smooth and cold as the windows,” lures Laszlo out of his room. The narrative
builds anxiety and anticipation as Laszlo hesitantly descends through the house.
Then a wonderful cascade of language creates a sudden shift in pace, mood and
perspective, inviting readers and listeners to consider the dark in new light—as
a presence with purpose. Lemony Snicket never trivializes children’s fear of the
dark. Instead he acknowledges that fear while elegantly traversing the tension
it creates to arrive at a point of reassurance and humorous possibility, where
the dark is both illuminated and illuminating. The Dark was edited by Susan Rich,
editor-at-large, and published in the United States in 2013 by Little, Brown
Books for Young Readers."
To read more about the award from the CCBlog, click here.
To read more about Lemony Snicket and his books, visit his website LemonySnicket.com.
Snicket is a contributor to the NCBLA's progressive story game The Exquisite Corpse Adventure, created as a national reading and writing initiative in partnership with the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress.
