Charlotte Zolotow Lecture

media release: Established in 1998, the lecture was named to honor Charlotte Zolotow, a distinguished children's book editor for 38 years with Harper Junior Books, and author of more than 65 picture books, including such classic works as Mr. Rabbit and the Lovely Present (Harper, 1962) and William's Doll (Harper, 1972). Ms. Zolotow attended the University of Wisconsin in Madison on a writing scholarship from 1933-36 where she studied with Professor Helen C. White. The Cooperative Children's Book Center, a library of the School of Education of the University of Wisconsin in Madison, administers the event which each year brings a distinguished children's book author or illustrator to the campus to deliver a free public lecture.

Grace Lin and Alvina Ling have been friends since childhood. As adults, they’ve each helped shape the world of contemporary children’s books, Grace as an author and illustrator, Alvina as an editor. Grace has created more than 20 books for children to-date in an already-distinguished career that includes a Newbery honor for Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, and a Caldecott honor for A Big Mooncake for Little Star, in addition to being the most recent recipient of the ALA/ALSC Legacy Award for “significant and lasting contributions to children’s literature.” Alvina is Vice President and Editor-in-Chief at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, bringing her vision and insight to editing children’s books for all ages.

In honor of the 25th anniversary of the Charlotte Zolotow Lecture, and in recognition of Charlotte’s career as both a writer and editor of books for children, we’ve invited Grace and Alvina, cohosts of Book Friends Forever, an entertaining, insightful podcast about children’s book publishing, to talk about some of the things important to them as they engage in the serious work of creating books for children and teens in our world today.