I'm sorry that I'm not able to accept this wonderful award in person!  The culprit?  My 85-pound German Shepherd, Daisy, who decided during our training session last Sunday that she'd rather waltz than heel, so down I went.  I haven't forgiven her yet because this is the one place I wanted to be tonight.

Can you imagine picking up your phone one morning last December and listening to your editor tell you that your FIRST novel, John Riley's Daughter, has been selected as Best Children's Book by the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association for its 2001 award AND they want you to show up in mid-March for a banquet at a beautiful resort where they can tell you so in front of people like the legendary Ursula K. LeGuin!   I made the sophisticated response that I'm sure every first-time award winner makes--"What?????"

Though I've written all my life--you ARE born to it--it wasn't until the 1990s that I threw over the traces of a lifetime of responsibilities and decided it was time for me!  Guess what?  The Universe smiled and threw the doors wide open!  The books being published today for children and young adults have such extraordinary range--from the lighter, less complicated end all the way through to the darker, more demanding end.  I'm delighted to find myself in some pretty great company.  The only signed-in-blood, hand-over-your-heart promise is simply to tell the children the truth!

Recently, an interviewer wanted to know what winning the PNBA award meant to me?  Well, it means validation -- and surprise -- and honor.  It also means my enormous gratitude to the people who not only sell books but LOVE them, who go out of their way to look beyond the current bestseller and tap writers marching to a different drummer on the shoulder--the independent booksellers! 

To the Pacific Northwest Independents -- thank you for giving this kind of recognition to John Riley's Daughter, a slim book about an unloved child named Memphis Riley--and how she came to understand that a life worth living requires the painful necessity for compassion and forgiveness.  From the heart--THANK YOU!