My sixth book, 'A Breath of Snow and Ashes,' was nominated for a number of book awards, one of which was The Quill Award, and they had it in New York at the Natural History Museum.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I hate to tell you this, but I did not know what the National Book Award was when I got the call.
My first book, 'Contest,' had a guy fighting aliens in the New York Public Library. The second book, 'Ice Station,' and 'Temple' were present-day military thrillers.
What's important to me is that all of my books are in print - and, in a way, that becomes the challenge, not winning this prize or getting that review. It's that the work is there, and you can walk into many bookshops throughout the world and buy it.
After I won the Newbery Medal for 'From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler,' children all over the world let me know that they liked books that take them to unusual places where they meet unusual people.
One of my books, 'Rain Falling on My Face,' earned me the 39th Edogawa Ranpo prize. It's a very prestigious literary prize in Japan, mostly for mysteries and thrillers.
I actually really suck at naming books, so lots of years ago, readers were sending in their ideas for titles, and what we realized is that they were smarter than us. So we thought, Hey, go for it. So now we have a contest every year.
The best novel I wrote was one called 'Crusoe's Daughter,' which never won any prizes. But I was getting somewhere in that. I'm not sure I have in any of the others.
I judged about a zillion awards this year so I've been reading a lot of books that just came out.
At the age of 12 I won the school prize for Best English Essay. The prize was a copy of Somerset Maugham's 'Introduction To Modern English And American Literature.' To this day I keep it on the shelf between my collection of Forester's works and the little urn that contains my mother's ashes.
I don't think if you're serious about literature your library is filled with award-winning books.