As we prepare to celebrate the Walter Award winners and honorees, we wanted to hear from the authors themselves on their awe-inspiring books.

You can livestream the eighth annual​ ​Walter​ ​Awards ​Ceremony​ and Symposium this Friday, March 17, at 10:30 am ET. Jacqueline Woodson, National Book Award winner and 2018–19 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, will emcee the ceremony and Ellen Oh, WNDB CEO and award-winning author, will moderate the symposium!

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Andrea L. Rogers, 2023 Walter Award, Teen Category for Man Made Monsters 

Tell us the story of this manuscript. What was your life like while you were writing this book? 

Man Made Monsters was written late at night while working full-time in libraries and public schools. It was birthed in hospital waiting rooms and after funerals. It was penned next to sleeping babies and while sitting in carpool lanes.

Man Made Monsters was written as a response to people telling me all the Native Americans were dead, to the tears of children, to frightened kids coming out, as a meditation on the loss of students and loved ones.

Man Made Monsters is a product of history and my cultural heritage.

For 21 years, stories from Man Made Monsters were written and rejected and put away.

That could have been where the story ends.

Instead, Man Made Monsters found the right readers. I had the support of people like Laura Pegram at KWELI and Nick Thomas at Levine Querido. In collaboration with them, and both Native and non-Native friends, it became a better manuscript. It was made beautiful through the artwork of Cherokee artist Jeff Edwards who found details that mattered and rendered them stunning. The design of the book was treated with care and made more beautiful by Johnathan Yamakami.

Man Made Monsters is my book, but it’s the book of readers who love it, too. For that, I am grateful.

Why do you think it’s so important that young people have wide and varied access to books?

The one superpower I have always wanted was to be able to be in two places at once. There were so many times that I scheduled myself to be doing more than one thing at a time. For now, that’s impossible. The FOMO is real.

But…books.

I can’t be two people. I can’t live multiple lives, see a play while I take my child to DND. Curl up with a book and tea at the same time I am, also, riding my bike next to a clear stream full of living creatures. Sometimes, you have to choose.

But…stories. Books and other people’s stories let me live a fuller life. I can’t be you. I can read your story, I can feel your joy and pain in your words. Best of all, you can feel mine.

In this way, we can understand people and worlds outside of our own.

What’s the biggest misconception you hear about being an author or illustrator?

The biggest misconception I hear about writing children’s books is, “How hard could it be? I mean, even a child could do it.”

I don’t doubt it. Kids are amazing. They are open minded and never stop asking questions. Kids do amazing, wonderful, world-changing things every single day. Somewhere, right now, a kid is doing something with their whole heart and making the world a better place.

But, as an adult, writing for children can be more difficult. We have blinders on, we’re practical, we have to pay rent. We have to worry about health insurance and crowdfund medical expenses because for some reason health care is not a right in this country. But I digress. Writing for children is hard. It is one of the most difficult things to do. We have to be honest while not harming them. We have to tell stories that might break an adult, but might let a child know things could be better, [that] they are not completely powerless. We tell stories that break hearts, but we have to let a child know they are making the world a better place, that if they can just keep going, they can make someone’s life better, even their own.

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Jeff Edwards, 2023 Walter Award, Teen Category for Man Made Monsters 

Tell us the story of this manuscript. What was your life like while writing/working on this book? 

Creating the art for this manuscript was the scariest task I ever agreed to try and complete. Before committing to illustrate Man Made Monsters, I was not entirely sure if I was physically and mentally capable of creating illustrations for an entire book. I had been active in the art world for ten years and had experienced great success. I have many awards at the local and state level and even won a Best in Division and first place at one of the largest Native art shows, the Santa Fe Indian Art Market. So it had nothing to do with my skills or ability, but how my artwork is created mentally.

I create artwork that I build entirely in my head, by me and only me, and then I put it on paper. So when Andrea approached me about doing this I instantly told her no. You could give me one billion very detailed things about an art piece you might want created. But I am not in your head, I can’t see it visually, so I can’t create your visions. So up to this point I had refused many, many folks asking me to create artwork for them.

Andrea “hassled” me a few more times and came by my office and finally I said okay, with stipulations. Let me read the stories and develop the artwork, and I think I can do this. I had one strict deal-breaking stipulation. Almost all of my artwork contains the Cherokee Syllabary and it was to stay that way.

I read the manuscript three times. Each time I would take notes of things that stood out to me in each story. Sometimes it was the central focus of the stories, but more times than not I created the artwork from one particular sentence in that story, and it didn’t always represent the story as a whole. Once my mind knows what it wants to do I am just a machine, a vessel so to speak, and I come out of the daze and I have something completed in front of me. I told Nick I was going to get started and he told me I had plenty of time, to just go at a pace that was comfortable and to send the image in for approval. Nick didn’t know, nor Andrea, or anyone else, that I sort of go off the rails when I start something. For seven or eight days I worked 20-hour days, creating. So basically in two weeks I illustrated the entire book. Then I had to wait for a year for the book to come out!

Why do you think it’s so important that young people have wide and varied access to books?

It is extremely important for young people to be flooded with diverse books with wide and varied topics because they have a right to know not only about their people, but other races and cultures as well.

I went to school from 1980-1992. We didn’t have the internet, smart phones, no easy way to Google anything. Back then there was no easy way to debunk a stereotype about a particular group of people. I am Cherokee, and I learned nothing about my heritage in those 12 or so years. Our school is located maybe 25 miles from Sequoyah Cabin, inventor of the Cherokee Syllabary writing system, and we never went there. He was never discussed. We are about 30 miles from the Cherokee Nation headquarters in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. We never visited it. The Cherokee Heritage Center was a place that had a village from the 1700s where people played stickball, did flint mapping for arrows, there was a council house, all things Cherokee. We never visited it.

Once I graduated high school I attended Haskell Indian Junior College. Then I began learning about the atrocities that all Natives faced throughout history. And I got angry. Very angry. Why was I not taught this? I was right there, yet we never visited these places. Why? Because it was swept under the rug, an ugly past is often a forgotten past.

So when I was asked to work on Man Made Monsters, I quickly started realizing that even though the stories were science fiction in nature, they also represented the history of our people, in a more modern-day setting. So I think all children should know how people once treated minorities. That those minorities had to fight every single day of their life for the right to vote, the right to be a free citizen and the right to be an American.

What’s the biggest misconception you hear about being an author or illustrator?

The biggest misconception I faced with being a Cherokee graphic artist were the personal hurdles that I put up and my definition of what an artist was. I didn’t become an acting artist until I was 37. I had zero plans of becoming an artist. I am not in any way, shape or form a traditional artist. I can’t tell the difference (thank God) between an art deco piece or a Renaissance piece. Nor do I want to have that ability. I didn’t go to school to be an artist. Yes, I did eventually receive my degree in graphic design, but I was slinging art way before that ever happened. I can’t tell you past works by the greats, where they lived, when they lived, where those pieces are located today and again, it’s not something I care to learn or know.

But I had the misconception that I needed proof (aka a piece of paper) to say this guy is an artist. 10 degrees from 10 different colleges in 10 different subjects. I needed to be well versed in all things art. I needed to follow a specific set of rules. I needed to take on one subject (aka Cherokee art styles) and stick with it.

Then I learned something that was invaluable: The only thing I ever found interesting in the art world. Art had no rules. It was a lawless activity, and I am all about no rules. Once I realized that I had a few things to say. Many times over.

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Sonora Reyes, 2023 Walter Honors, Teen Category, The Lesbiana’s Guide to Catholic School 

Tell us the story of this manuscript. What was your life like while you were writing this book?

The Lesbiana’s Guide to Catholic School was the first original novel I ever wrote. I had been writing fan fiction for years before I dared to dip my toes into anything original. So by the time National Novel Writing Month 2018 came around, I knew it was time to dive in. I had originally planned on writing a fantasy, but I knew I didn’t have time to build an entire world or magic system from scratch. So, I decided to write about something I was intimately familiar with—something I could write about in-depth for an entire book without having to stop to research, and The Lesbiana’s Guide to Catholic School was born!

Why do you think it’s so important that young people have wide and varied access to books?

As a kid, the only books I had access to were the ones we were required to read in class. I only knew of reading as something you did for a grade, something that I personally always failed at. The idea of reading for fun was so foreign to me that I’d never even tried it until adulthood. I think if young people have wide access to books, and are encouraged to read (whether it’s novels, graphic novels, manga, audiobooks, etc.), they won’t have to experience that shame that comes with not reading “well enough” for a grade.

What’s the biggest misconception you hear about being an author or illustrator?

That we’re all introverts and hate social interaction! It’s true that many writers are introverts, but whenever I’ve gone to a writing-related event, everyone has been so friendly and outgoing. I think that because writing can be such a solitary job, we’re all itching to get to know each other when we get the chance.

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Sabaa Tahir, 2023 Walter Honors, Teen Category, All My Rage

Why should young people have access to books?

For so many kids, books are a lifeline. This manifests in a few different ways. First of all, books can be an escape, and that usage shouldn’t be undervalued. When a child’s life is too much, to have an escape can be the difference between having hope and something to look forward to and dragging yourself through your days. Second, books validate and teach and can make kids feel less alone. They help kids know there are others like them out there who feel what they feel, and who have survived it. And the last thing I’ll mention is that books teach empathy not just for ourselves, but for those who are different from us, or who have experiences we aren’t familiar with.

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Hear from the authors as they discuss Books Save Lives and more by livestreaming the eighth annual​ ​Walter​ ​Awards ​Ceremony​ and Symposium this Friday, March 17, at 10:30 am ET.