Didn’t expect I’d be taking a break from writing my next novel to write another post this month, but I realize I need to bubble over with gratitude before I can dive into my revising my next novel this morning. Over the past week, I developed an abiding empathy for champagne bottles under pressure because I heard the wonderful news about the Walters and the Golden Kite, both, last week – but wasn’t allowed to share anything publicly until the announcements were made on Tuesday afternoon. Now I am under no pressure to keep is secret and I wanted to share my immense gratitude to everyone who has loved and supported me and THE BRIDGE HOME. I’ll begin with family. My spouse, for his love and support, for his unwavering belief in my work, for the work he does every day to help our environment and our planet, his quiet commitment to increasing diversity in environmental chemistry & engineering & oceanography, his tremendous and absolute humility and his philanthropic nature, his dedication to reducing our carbon footprint – even though it sometimes drives even me batty! My child, who, among other things, makes these lovely, cute little videos for me – like this one that celebrates the gifts of the two awards I have been so lucky to receive:

There are so many people I want to thank – more than I can possibly mention in my award acceptance speeches. I also realize that I will probably keep revising this post, because my mind is sort of frozen now and I am SURE I can’t remember all the kind souls who helped me along the way, and I ask them to forgive me…

My legendary editor, Nancy Paulsen. My literary agent, Rob Weisbach.

My speaking agent, Phil Bildner (an author, too, whose book HIGH FIVE FOR GLEN BURKE is coming out this year). The three authors who judged the Golden Kite and decided THE BRIDGE HOME was worthy: C. Alexander London, Angela Dominguez, and Susan Fletcher!

As you can see, this is an evolving list! There are so many bookstores and librarians and teachers and educators to thank, but for this post, I’m going to restrict myself to  my author colleagues because the SCBWI award is given by authors:

Peter Johnson, Kathi Appelt, Kathy Erskine, Margarita Engle, Elly Swartz, Kristy Dempsey, Holly Thompson, Brian Lies, Chris Tebbetts, Dan Gemeinhart, Nancy Bo Flood, Janet Wong, Alison Green Myers, Ann Braden, Sally Reilly, Carolyn Coman, Jerry Spinelli, Donna Jo Napoli, Nancy Tupper Ling, Jennifer Jacobsen, Victoria Coe, Carole Vogel, Pam Vaughn, Julia Boyce, Krista Suprenatant ….

And the many authors who worked for diversity before me, because the Walters is given by WNDB:

Jackie Woodson, Mildred Taylor, Christopher Paul Curtis, …

And finally, congratulations to the winner of the Walter for YA @marikotamaki and all the finalists for MG and YA: @hirosemaryhello, @azemezi, @acevedowrites, @leeseray, @jasminewarga; as well as the winners of the Golden Kite in the other 6 categories: @julieberrywrites, @elizabethrusch, @DHeiligman, @HyewonYum @Remy_Lai, & Ashley Benham Yazdani, and all the finalists. So honored to join the  the current and past winners and honorees for the WNDB Walters and the Golden Kite.