-
from Wikipedia.orgMatthew Tobin Anderson (M. T. Anderson), is an author, primarily of picture books for children and novels for young adults. Anderson lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
His picture books include Handel Who Knew What He Liked, Strange Mr. Satie, The Serpent Came to Gloucester, and Me, All Alone, at the End of the World. He has written such young adult books as Thirsty, Burger Wuss, Feed, The Game of Sunken Places and The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing. For middle grader readers, his novels include Whales on Stilts : M. T. Anderson's Thrilling Tales and its sequel, The Clue of the Linoleum Lederhosen.
Born in Stow, Massachusetts, Anderson attended Harvard, University of Cambridge, and Syracuse. He worked at Candlewick Press <1> before Thirsty was accepted for publication. Anderson is a former instructor at Vermont College in Montpelier, Vermont and former music critic at The Improper Bostonian.
Anderson is also a board member of the National Children's Book and Literacy Alliance <2> a national not-for-profit that actively advocates for literacy, literature, and libraries.
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Volume 1: The Pox Party <3> was named a 2007 Michael L. Printz Honor book <4> for literary excellence in young adult literature given by the Young Adult Library Services Association <5>. It was also the winner of the 2006 National Book Award for Young People <6>.
Feed was a 2002 Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner, a 2003 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award Honor Book, and a finalist for the 2002 National Book Award.
Handel Who Knew What He Liked was a 2002 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award Honor Book.
-
from The National Book Foundation: http://www.nationalbook.org/nba2006_ypl_anderson.html2006 National Book Award Winner
Young People's Literature
M.T. Anderson
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume One: The Pox Party
Candlewick Press
Acceptance speech
Young People's Literature Chair, Margaret Bechard: It's an honor to represent the judging panel for the Young People's Literature award. If I were writing this story, I could not have created a better group of fellow judges. Patricia McKissack, Linda Sue Park, Ben Saenz, and Jude Watson brought intelligence, humor, and passion to our deliberations. There's no greater pleasure than talking about and discussing and yes, heatedly arguing about books with four other people who care deeply about good writing. And if you don't think that children's book authors heatedly arguing isn’t a pretty terrifying sight, well you haven’t seen children’s book authors. We had much to discuss. We read picture books, easy readers, middle grade and young adult novels, graphic novels, poetry, and nonfiction. It was exciting and gratifying to see the depth and breadth of creativity, talent, and artistic courage exemplified in the children's books published in this past year. Our committee looked for stories that would leave us breathless, for characters that would haunt our lives and our dreams, for authors who would indeed be vigilant witnesses to the wonderful and fearful complexity of life. We found five outstanding authors. The finalists for this year's National Book Award in Young People's Literature are M.T. Anderson for The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Volume I: The Pox Party, published by Candlewick Press; Martine Leavitt, Keturah and Lord Death, published by Front Street Books, a division of Boyds Mills Press; Patricia McCormick for Sold, published by Hyperion; Nancy Werlin, for The Rules of Survival published by Dial Books, a division of Penguin Putnam; and Gene Yang, for American Born Chinese, published by First Second, a division of Roaring Brook Press. And the winner of the National Book Award in Young People's Literature is M. T. Anderson for The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing.
<applause>
M.T. Anderson: Thank you. Thank you so much Margaret and to the whole committee. It’s an incredible honor to be included in this list of books. There are actually several reasons why it is wonderful, the most salient of which is that this, I believe, is the first time that a graphic novel has been included in the nominees. And I know there is a lot of the dithering that goes on in the blogosphere about whether graphic novels are literature or not, and I think that anyone who has read Gene Yang's American Born Chinese can see that it is poignant, it is sophisticated, it is literature for young people. So anyway, I'm just really glad that we are leading that charge. I would just like to thank my parents, my girlfriend Nicole, and John Bell, the historian who did the fact checking for this book, The Boston Athenaeum where I did a lot of the research, and last but in fact foremost, Candlewick Press, which published the book. Usually when one goes to a publisher of children's books and says, ‘Hey, would you like a 900-page two volume historical epic for teens, written in a kind of unintelligible 18th-century Johnsonian Augustan prose by an obsessive neurotic who rarely leaves his house or even gets dressed,’ usually that children's publisher will say ‘No, we would not like to buy that book.’ But Liz Bicknell, my editor, purchased the book and has just been incredibly supportive for the last several years. The sales and marketing department has taken this basically un-sellable product and has just done amazing things with it. It's just a testament, I think, to what a small press can do just by taking risks. So thank you Candlewick for taking this risk on me, for showing the incredibly poor judgment to accept a manuscript that has allowed us to come here tonight. Thanks. Thank you all.
