Robie and Michael Emberley’s picture book MAIL HARRY TO THE MOON! is the winner of the 2008 Irma S. and James H. Black Award For Excellence in Children’s Literature awarded on May 12th by the Bank Street College of Education, New York City. Read about the award here.
    This prestigious award goes to an outstanding book for young children—a book, according to Bank Street, “in which text and illustrations are inseparable, each enhancing and enlarging on the other to produce a singular whole.”
    Robie and Michael were thrilled to know that children were a vital part of naming MAIL HARRY TO THE MOON! the best picture book of 2008. Over the course of many weeks, more than 2,500 children around the country read, examined, discussed, and re-read the four nominated picture books before they voted on the winning book.

I’ve finished the text for the picture book called WHEN LIONS ROAR! to be published by Orchard Books/Scholastic Press. This book is much more like a poem than any picture book I have ever written.

Writing, writing, rewriting-and more writing. No complaints at all about all the writing I have to do. It's what I love to do. And it means that there are even more books of mine that will be published all the way through 2014! I know that seems so far away, but the work that an author, illustrator, and editor do has to be completely finished one full year before the a book is printed, shipped, and published, and finally lands in bookstores and libraries. Yep, it takes that long.