Read for Your Life #1: Speeches & Writings of Katherine Paterson
Автор Katherine Paterson
Описание
Об авторе
Katherine Paterson is one of the world’s most celebrated and beloved authors. Among her many awards are two Newberys and two National Book Awards, and she was recently named a "Living Legend” by the Library of Congress. She has been published in more than 22 languages in a variety of formats, from picture books to historical novels.
Связано с Read for Your Life #1
Похожие Книги
Связанные категории
Предварительный просмотр книги
Read for Your Life #1 - Katherine Paterson
Crossroads
Read for Your Life
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS INAUGURAL SPEECH AS NATIONAL AMBASSADOR FOR YOUNG PEOPLE'S LITERATURE
January 5, 2010
LET me begin by saying thank you to Dr. Billington, to the Center for the Book here in this wonderful library, to the Children's Book Council and Every Child a Reader, and to the committee who nominated me to represent my friends and colleagues as a spokesperson for young people's literature in our country. I think Jon Scieszka, our terrific inaugural ambassador, is the only other person in this room who can imagine how thrilled I am to be standing up here right now.
There are many people in this room who have been with me on my long journey to this place. Most of them know me very well. Paterson friends and relations here today are as numerous as Rabbit's in The House at Pooh Corner. I am grateful to you all, especially to my husband, John, who for more than forty-seven years has been my chief support, not to mention cheerleader, and to my four children, who thought I was famous before anyone else bothered to notice. I also have to acknowledge my editor of going on forty years, Virginia Buckley. I'm sure when she was handed my first manuscript plucked from the slush pile, she couldn't have imagined what lay ahead, but without her perceptive eye and gentle hand through all these years, I wouldn't be standing here today.
When I'm talking with young readers, someone nearly always asks: When did you know you were going to be a writer?
I look at the ten- or eleven-year-old asking the question and I feel sure that he or, more often, she already knows that she is a writer. I answer by asking the class if they would like to hear my first published work. They always say yes, and so I recite it:
Pat, pat, pat.
There is the rat.
Where is the cat?
Pat, pat, pat.
This was published in the Shanghai American School newspaper when I was seven years old. And right beside