Caldecott MEDAL ACCEPTANCE SPEECH ’d like to begin tonight with some numbers. Illustration and commer- I cial art: 741.6. Public speaking and oratory: 808.51. I think you see what I’m getting at here. I don’t want to question anyone’s intentions, but when illus- trators are asked to give banquet-hall speeches, someone is showing a real willingness to misshelve. Twenty years ago I had the opportu- nity to illustrate a story by Avi, edited by Richard Jackson, titled City of Light, City of Dark. This was my first book; the book had a villain; the villain was, at least in Brian Floca received the 2014 his own mind, an artist; and the villain’s (Randolph) Caldecott Medal for artwork took the form of immense, gar- Locomotive (Atheneum/Simon & ish neon signs. It makes me very happy, Locomotive was in many ways a book I Schuster). His acceptance remarks then, to be here with all of you tonight in had been waiting to make. Trains had were delivered at the Newbery Las Vegas, Nevada, neon as far as the eye been on and off my drafting table sev- Caldecott Banquet on Sunday, can see, and to have been brought here eral times over the years. I had, after all, June 29, 2014, during the by the artwork in a book dedicated to Avi grown up in a town founded by a rail- American Library Association and edited by Dick Jackson. road company, been the proud operator Annual Conference. of an HO-scale operation as a boy, and Locomotive is a book that took a long logged my fair share of miles on Amtrak time to create. Some of you already know as an adult. And yet for a long while the this, and some of you know it too well. subject wasn’t under my skin in the ir- The path this work took twisted and rational, compelling way I need in order turned. Now an interesting parallel is that to work on a book in earnest. The es- the path of the Union Pacific Railroad sential, triggering moment for the book Company, as it headed west from Oma- came only when I found myself on an ha, Nebraska, also, at least at first, twisted early-morning train ride while abroad— and turned. The difference is that the away, importantly, from familiar sights Union Pacific was under contract to the and places. The train rolled first through government, and they were being paid darkness. Then the sun rose over a new by the mile. That is not the arrangement landscape, lit a new countryside that ar- I had with Atheneum/Simon & Schuster. rived and disappeared out the window So why the twists and why the turns? as quickly as I could take it in. That was For more information Author/illustrator Brian Floca was born and raised in Temple, Tex. He graduated from about the Caldecott Medal, visit Brown University, Providence, R.I., and received his MFA from the School of Visual Arts. http://bit.ly/caldecott-medal. His books have received four Sibert Honors for nonfiction, an Orbis Pictus Award and Honor, a silver medal from the Society of Illustrators, and have twice been selected for The New York Times’ annual 10 Best Illustrated Books list. He has illustrated works by Avi, including a graphic novel and the Poppy stories. Floca lives in Brooklyn, N.Y. FUN FACT: Brian once had a part-time job answering phones at Harvard University. Caldecott MEDAL ACCEPTANCE SPEECH it. There was the feeling of travel, the feel- how different my impressions of 1869 2014 CALDECOTT ing of moving through unknown places. are now than before I began. Many of HONOR BOOKS In this aspect of travel we are reminded my earlier ideas, I now realize, had come of one of the great tensions of life: the from the small black-and-white photo- tension between the desire to stay in graphs we so often see of that period— one place, to stay true to who we are, still images, sober images, from a still and the desire to leave that place and to and sober time, it might seem. But in- risk becoming someone new, to become stead, what a swift-moving and brightly who we might be. In my book Lightship colored time it was. What a pleasure it a crew stays put, where they need to be. was to spend my time learning that, try- In Moonshot a crew leaves but returns ing to think of ways to pass that sense of to home and to safety. In Locomotive a discovery on to young readers in words family leaves and will stay away. They’ve and pictures, trying to ignite in that au- Journey. left one life to make another. This may dience a sense of how alive and real his- Becker, Aaron. sound a little grand, and I don’t kid tory can feel. Illus. by the author. myself that these are the things young Candlewick readers see first in my books, if they see The attempts to figure all of this out them at all. Many may not see past the were made in books, photographs, visits noises and the gears and the smoke and to museums, conversations, on a drive the wrecks, and that’s fine with me. I like across the West, even in the cabs of loco- all those things, too, I really do, and an motives one hundred and fifty years old. interest in them drives my work as well. Most of the actual making of this book But it’s the power of landscape and trav- was done in a studio in Brooklyn, New el and change that gets me started, that York. Like the number of the Union Pa- tells me I will stay interested through the cific locomotive that pulled into Prom- research and work to come. ontory Summit on May 10, 1869, the studio street address is 119. The Central Not that I truly understood how much Pacific engine that day in 1869, by the Flora and the Flamingo. research and work Locomotive would way, was the Jupiter. Next door to the Idle, Molly. require when I began it. L. P. Hartley’s studio? Jupiter Motorcycle Repair. You Illus. by the author. novel The Go-Between opens famously, may make of this what you will, and in Chronicle “The past is a foreign country: they do any case what I like best about the studio things differently there.” I stepped rather is not the address so much as the artists innocently into that country when I de- with whom I share it: Sophie Blackall, cided that it might add another layer of Edward Hemingway, John Bemelmans interest to this voyage by train if I set it Marciano, Sergio Ruzzier, and John on the brand-new transcontinental rail- Rocco before he cut loose for the West road. I quickly realized that they did a lot Coast. Writing and illustrating for young of things differently in 1869. It was both people can be a funny way to make a liv- challenge and pleasure to try to visit that ing, and not always funny ha-ha. While foreign country, to work to find the right making a children’s book, the things one Mr. Wuffles! ways to frame and organize what I was is asked to take seriously and the things Wiesner, David. learning there, the right ways to make a one is asked to take lightly can stand in Illus. by the author. book that could acknowledge its com- a sort of inverse relation to the priori- Clarion plexity while staying focused enough for ties of the rest of the world. Will this be a young audience. It was a pleasure and beautiful? Does that mistake look good, a challenge to try to make an accurate and should I leave it there? How did book that could also be a beautiful book. these people go to the bathroom? When And how much I learned in that making; making a children’s book, not calen- Caldecott MEDAL ACCEPTANCE SPEECH dars and checkbooks but questions like the e-mails began to arrive, Dick letting on its behalf, making sure that Locomo- these ought to be our highest concerns. me know he had run the bases at Athene- tive would be printed and published and For that reason and others this work we um, checked budgets and deadlines, and publicized in a way that gave it every do both offers and asks a lot. And when that we could expand the book by an- chance of being the book I hoped it might deadlines are coming up, and when other eight pages. Now, you should know be. What a relief to recognize that the re- deadlines have passed and we are chas- that Dick suggested cutting this para- sounding quiet I heard had been all the ing them from the wrong direction, days graph about himself when this speech while a show of trust, and what a privilege in the studio can grow long. One evening began running long, so he is not univer- to work with a team like this. Thank you last year Sergio put on his jacket and an- sally an expansionist. In the case of Loco- to everyone who is or has been at Ath- nounced casually that he was headed to motive, though, the extra room allowed eneum who helped this book find its way his “home away from home,” by which cramped passages to open up again.