PARK SLOPE — Neighborhood artists are joining the children's literary canon faster than "The Cat in the Hat" can say "Goodnight Moon."
Park Slopers cleaned up in several recently announced children's book awards, with the prestigious Caldecott Medal and Newbery Medal both going to locals, and two other neighborhood children's book creators winning honors as well.
Illustrator Sophie Blackall won the 2016 Caldecott Medal, which recognizes the year's best picture book, for "Finding Winnie." Author Matt de la Peña was awarded the 2016 Newbery Medal for "Last Stop on Market Street," which was also a 2016 Caldecott Honor book.
Writer and illustrator Stephen Savage's "Supertruck" was a 2016 Geisel Award Honor Book, and illustrator Sean Qualls won the 2016 Schneider Family Book Award for "Emmanuel's Dream: The True Story of Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah," written by Laurie Ann Thompson.
"This is a charming coincidence," said Andrew Medlar, president of the Chicago-based Association for Library Service to Children, which administers the Caldecott, Newbery and Geisel medals.
Medlar, a former Park Sloper who lived on Garfield Place, said the neighborhood is an incubator for children's book talent because there's an "ecosystem" of literary support that includes plenty of other authors, bookstores such as Community Bookstore, and the Brooklyn Public Library's main branch at Grand Army Plaza.
"They're fostering a new tradition and a new wave of creativity in the neighborhood," Medlar said.
The Newbery and the Caldecott are considered the pinnacle of children's literature awards and have honored bedtime story staples such as Maurice Sendak's "Where the Wild Things Are."
Blackall said in an email the Caldecott win made her "incredibly, unbelievably happy."
"Finding Winnie" tells the story of the real bear that inspired Winnie the Pooh. Blackall described it as a work about "ordinary people who do extraordinary things."
She added, “I have illustrated over 30 books for children, but there is something special about this book. ... It means the book will reach lots of families, and, hopefully, be passed down from our children, to their children."
Blackall, the mother of two children, has lived in Park Slope for five years and works in a Gowanus studio she shares with four other children's book makers. Even people without kids would probably recognize Blackall's work — she created a poster that was plastered on subway trains a few years ago.
The Newbery winner, Matt de la Peña, "is an eloquent speaker for kids' literature," said Stephanie Valdez, co-owner of Community Bookstore.
Valdez said de la Peña, who's written several young adult novels, makes it a point to visit groups of kids who don't often get to meet authors. "Last Stop on Market Street" is about a young African-American boy riding a city bus with his grandmother.
"As someone who’s Hispanic, I was thrilled to see that Matt de la Peña won for this particular book,” Valdez said. "It's an incredible book. It's a book that shows diversity as a normal part of city life, and that’s very rare."
De la Peña said in an email that winning the Newbery was a “humbling experience” that hadn’t quite sunk in yet. He's lived in Park Slope for 10 years and said he's a regular at Community Bookstore, Café Regular and High Dive, and still mourns the loss of Great Lakes.
De la Peña said the neighborhood is fertile ground for building an artistic community and counts authors such as Jackie Woodson, Emily Jenkins, Gayle Forman, Libba Bray and Robin Wasserman among his local pals.
But living in the area can be hard on a writer’s ego, de la Pena said.
"If your goal is to feel like a famous writer, then Park Slope is the wrong place,” he said. "There's a more famous writer on every car of every F Train."
