Selznick, Schlitz Rock ALA

or those lucky enough to attend the June 29 dinner at the Anaheim Hilton in California honoring this year's Newbery and Caldecott winners, it was clear that everyone had one word in mind to describe the acceptance speeches: electrifying.

“Both were unique people and astonishing storytellers,” says Barbara Genco, director of collection development at Brooklyn Public Library, referring to Laura Amy Schlitz, winner of the Newbery Medal for Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! (Candlewick) and illustrator Brian Selznick, who nabbed the Caldecott Medal for The Invention of Hugo Cabret (Scholastic). “We were blown away by both of them!”

Selznick—whose novel uses words and pictures to tell the story of Hugo, a 12-year-old orphan who lives in the walls of a Paris train station at the turn of the 20th century—dazzled an audience of more than 1,000 fans of children's literature. And it wasn't just the glittery black shirt under his suit—it was his riveting speech and presentation.

While Selznick spoke about the creative crossroads he'd reached before writing Hugo Cabret, attendees watched a series of large-screen illustrations depicting the young orphan receiving news about winning the Caldecott award. Delighted viewers saw Cabret hop on an Air France flight to Anaheim, CA, to attend the acceptance dinner as part of the American Library Association's annual conference.

The audience had no idea what to expect when Schlitz, a school librarian and storyteller, stood at the edge of the stage to deliver a funny and dramatic tale involving a kite, the removal of several moles from her forehead, and her experience overseeing recess duty as a media specialist. “We wondered if she would be a disaster coming after [Selznick],” says Genco. “But she was absolutely transcendent. We were utterly in the palm of her hands, as if we were in her second-grade class.”