Kid Authors, Illustrators Send Off the Class of 2010
RSSBy Rocco Staino
| Illustrator Jerry Pinkney received with an honorary doctorate of fine arts degree. |
On May 26 famed children's horror writer R. L. Stine, who penned the "Goosebumps" (Scholastic) and "Fear Street" (Simon Pulse) series, told 200 graduates of Macaulay Honors College of the City University of New York a ghost story. A haunted tale "seemed like the thing to do," said Stine, hoping this would lead his audience to remember some part of his speech.
Marking his first commencement address ever, Stine told the graduating class to "say yes to everything" because "I think I learned something from every project." He went on to advise that "you can recover from any mistake or setback as long as you just keep trying and keep your sense of humor."
Stine, who described his audience as "a bunch of smart kids who grew up reading my books," left them with this thought-"Life is full of surprises-surprises that can take you somewhere you never dreamed."
The importance of story was the message YA author Suzanne Fisher Staples gave on May 15 to the 405 graduates of her alma mater, Cedar Crest College, in Allentown, PA.
"If you know the intimate details of people's lives, you will see them as people of consequence-people whose stories matter as much as your story and mine," she said. "Our stories connect us to the great stream of humanity and carry us along on its swell."
| Patricia McKissack received an honorary doctor of letters degree. |
Staples, a 1967 graduate of the college, has written several novels set in the Middle East including Under the Persimmon Tree (Farrar, 2005), which takes place in Afghanistan.
In addition to giving commencement speeches, some children's book creators were bestowed honorary degrees for their work. The Pennsylvania College of Art & Design on May 8 awarded illustrator Jerry Pinkney, winner of the 2010 Caldecott Medal for The Lion and the Mouse (Little, Brown, 2009), with an honorary doctorate of fine arts degree for his lifetime of achievement.
Speaking to 60 graduates at the school's campus in Lancaster, Pinkney said that those who end up successful in the arts are "visual problem solvers."
He went on to tell the group, all of whom were receiving bachelor degrees in fine arts, that "this is an extraordinary time, the world is constantly changing. Use [all this new technology] to say something that matters. I challenge you to attend to your craft, make visual images that you believe in."
Pinkney closed his remarks by saying, "make your personal life and your professional life two sides of the same coin, and don't let a working day go by without using the knowledge you learned here."
Two-time Coretta Scott King Award-winner Patricia McKissack on May 8 returned to her alma mater Webster University in St. Louis, MO, to receive an honorary doctor of letters degree. McKissack's books include The Long Hard Journey: The Story of the Pullmam Porter (Walker, 1989), which she co-wrote with her husband, Fredrick, and The Dark-Thirty: Southern Tales of the Supernatural (Knopf, 2006). She received a master's of arts degree from Webster in 1975.
Walter Dean Myers, who grew up in Harlem, NY, and dropped out of Stuyvesant High School at 17 to enlist in the army, joined the 431 graduates of Amherst College in Massachusetts on May 23 to receive a doctor of letters degree. The college recognized Myers for his writing, which "often takes as subjects the difficult aspects of urban adolescent life: gang violence, drug abuse and peer pressure."
In the days prior to the ceremony, Myers discussed his work with students in a symposium entitled "An Argument for Random Knowledge," about how teens acquire knowledge both formally and informally. .
The author of over 30 books adds this latest honor to a roster of awards, including a Margaret A. Edwards Award, a Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence, five Coretta Scott King Awards, and two Newbery Honor Awards.
