Hurray for Hopkins

I’ve been sitting on a secret for over six months and this weekend all was revealed at the NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) convention. Of course I’ve noted repeatedly that Lee Bennett Hopkins was the recipient of the 2009 NCTE Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children. He was officially presented that award at the Books for Children Luncheon at the conference on Saturday—to a standing ovation.

But I had not shared details about the session on Friday where Lee spoke and was “toasted and roasted” by a panel of poets including Jane Yolen, Janet Wong, Rebecca Kai Dotlich, J. Patrick Lewis, Georgia Heard, and Walter Dean Myers.

Well.

My indomitable collaborator, poet and author Janet Wong, lives an hour away, and volunteered to bring a veritable truckload of supplies to our session to create a bona fide party atmosphere! (Bless you, Janet!) So, we had two banquet tables decorated in purple (Lee’s signature color) filled to brimming with our poetry “props”-- cookies, muffins, and chocolates and champagne glasses and bubbly cider to toast and cheer Lee as he entered the room. We had printed purple napkins and helium-filled purple balloons. We had a boombox playing a custom-created riff on Cole Porter’s classic, “Brush up your Shakespeare” (redone for Hopkins) by the lovely poet Kristine O’Connell George, coming all the way from California for this event! And that was just for openers!

Each of the panel poets shared poems and stories about Lee, his impact, his process, his personality. We listened, we laughed, we celebrated. And there were another 10 poets in the audience who joined in, offering their poems and stories, including Carole Boston Weatherford, Eileen Spinelli, Heidi Mordhorst, Elaine Magliaro, Michele Krueger, Bobbi Katz, Sara Holbrook, John Grandits, Kristine O’Connell George, and Ralph Fletcher. (Am I forgetting anyone? I hope not!) (Thank you also to our publishers for their support of this session: Simon & Schuster, Little/Brown, Scholastic, Candlewick, and Boyds Mills Press.)

We also had the best party favor ever, if I do say so myself! Everyone there received a brand new book of poetry published just for this event (in a limited run). This “festschrift” book featured original poems and anecdotes written by 61 poets, many friends and collaborators of Lee. Contributors included (appearing in reverse alphabetical order, just for fun):

Jane Yolen

Joyce Lee Wong

Janet Wong

Allan Wolf

Karen Winnick

Carole Boston Weatherford

April Halprin Wayland

Ann Wagner

Eileen Spinelli

Sonya Sones

Marilyn Singer

Joyce Sidman

Alice Schertle

Laura Purdie Salas

Joanne Ryder

Susan Pearson

Ann Whitford Paul

Linda Sue Park

Naomi Shihab Nye

Walter Dean Myers

Heidi Mordhorst
Pat Mora

Donna Marie Merritt

Jude Mandell

Elaine Drabik Magliaro

J. Patrick Lewis
JonArno Lawson

Julie Larios

Michele Krueger

X.J. Kennedy

Bobbi Katz

Alan Katz

Paul Janeczko

Sara Holbrook

Mary Ann Hoberman

Georgia Heard

Juanita Havill

David Harrison

Avis Harley

Lorie Ann Grover

Nikki Grimes

John Grandits

Joan Bransfield Graham

Charles Ghigna

Carole Gerber

Kristine O’Connell George

Helen Frost

Betsy Franco

Douglas Florian

Ralph Fletcher

Bob Falls

Emma D. Dryden

Rebecca Kai Dotlich

Graham Denton

Jill Corcoran

Leslie Bulion

Calef Brown

Brod Bagert

Kathi Appelt

Jaime Adoff

Arnold Adoff
(Thank you all so much, dear poets. Your copies will be coming in the mail soon, now that the project is no longer secret!)

When we first conceived this project, we hoped to gather a few of Lee’s poet friends to honor him with a small booklet of original poems. I thought it might be a small, stapled booklet that I’d Xerox at the office. Ha! This idea had a life of its own! Janet Wong and I gathered poet names and email addresses and approached NCTE for funding. We asked the amazing Stephen Alcorn, one of Lee’s frequent book illustrators, for art to accompany the project. (Thank you so much, Stephen. Everyone commented on your gorgeous cover!) Everywhere we turned, people said, “Yes!” Yes to poems, yes to anecdotes, yes to art, yes to funding! (Thank you, Debbie Zagorski and Jo Anna Wisniewski, for going to bat for us. Thank you, Ralph Fletcher and the NCTE Poetry Award Committee for all your support!)

All summer long, poems flowed in—poems of all kinds, of admiration, of appreciation, of celebration. And many more poets sent their best wishes, including Jack Prelutsky, Marilyn Nelson, Linda Ashman, Carol Diggory Shields, Jan Greenberg, Charles R. Smith, Jr., Kenn Nesbitt, Stephanie Hemphill, and Tracie Vaughn Zimmer. And we’re sure there are others who have worked with Lee whom we missed who would add their words of thanks and praise to this tribute. It’s been gratifying to see such a thriving community of children’s poets and humbling to observe the legacy of our much beloved Lee Bennett Hopkins.

Our Friday morning session was glorious, full of energy and poetry and admiration for Lee. I think all who were there felt that they had been part of something special. I heard lovely comments from people all weekend long and was so gratified that Lee—and poetry itself—had engendered such a “high” for conference-goers. Thank you all for sharing your words and your work. Thank you, Lee, for making it all possible!

Posting (not poem) by Sylvia M. Vardell © 2009. All rights reserved.
Image credit: SV, Stephen Alcorn