Sid Fleischman Award: Molly Burnham for TEDDY MARS

The Sid Fleischman Humor Award this year goes to the wonderful Molly Burnham, who wrote TEDDY MARS: ALMOST A WORLD RECORD BREAKER.

The award, named for the beloved writer Sid Fleischman, is given to the year's best funny book. Sid was one of the founding members of the SCBWI. Lisa Yee won the award the first time it was given, and she presented the honor to Molly, a debut novelist.

"Are you freaking out? If you're not, there's something wrong with you," Lisa said to Molly. "There are 1,000 people staring at you. THAT'S 2,000 EYEBALLS."

TEDDY MARS is about  boy obsessed with breaking world records. He'll try anything to reach his goal. "Funny, charming, and with its share of pigeon-poop jokes, this is a must-read for anyone who's ever felt out of place."

"When I found out I won this award, I immediately felt I wasn't funny any more," Molly said. (Everyone laughed immediately, proving the Molly is bonkers.)

She cried when she found out she won the Sid Fleischman award. "It's been a faraway dream that I would someday be worthy of this award. This dream ... started when I was a little kid. It means so much, and I am—to borrow a word from Road Dahl—ridonkuloulsly blissful."

Michelle Knudsen Accepts the Sid Fleischman Award for Humor

Michelle Knudsen is a New York Times best-selling author of more than 40 books for young readers, including the picture book Library Lion (illustrated by Kevin Hawkes), the middle-grade fantasy novels The Dragon of Trelian and The Princess of Trelian, and the young adult novel Evil Librarian.

This book earned her the 2015 Sid Fleischman Award for Humor.

"For writers of humorous fiction, life is a tough room," Paul Fleischman said in presenting the award. "Sense of humor varies as wildly as taste in food."

He called Michelle's book a "frothy delight" that has entranced readers. And then he presented her with a set of keys to an alternate universe where humor is as respected as it should be.

She spoke of how much it meant to her to hear from former Sid Fleischman Award winner Alan Silberberg, who reassured her she didn't need to be funny onstage (she was, though—wonderfully so).

When she started EVIL LIBRARIAN it was as a break from another book, and she didn't know it would be funny. "Once I realized I had the start of a story that was funny, I started to panic that it had to be funny all the way through."

Her mentor Tim Wynne Jones told her to stop trying to think about being funny, and just to write the story, which is about friendships and musical theater and demons (and an evil librarian). 

Michelle expressed thanks to the SCBWI and a large crew of supportive family, friends, and professional colleagues—as well as to Stephen Sondheim and his hilarious disturbing musical "Sweeney Todd." 

The Sid Fleischman Humor Award Goes To...

This year's winner of the Sid Fleischman Humor Award is the iconic Mo Willems, for his chortle-guffaw- and laugh-filled Goldilocks and the Three Narhwals - whoops, make that Goldilocks and the Three Accountants - what was it again?  Ah... Goldilocks and the Three Mosquitoes!

While Mo wasn't able to attend in person to accept his award for Goldilocks and the Three Zombies, he did send a video.  A really, really funny video.

Goldilocks and the Three Robots is a book that stays with you, in the wackiest and best possible way.  Well, except for that title.

Congratulations, Mo, for your Sid Fleischman Humor Award for Goldilocks and the Three (wait for it...) Dinosaurs!

Find out more about the legendary children's book author and Newbery Award-Winner Sid Fleischman here.

A Sid Fleischman Award for Chris Rylander

"If the land of children's literature were a treasure island, Sid Fleischman would have been a treasure chest of gems all by himself," said Cheryl Zach, as she introduced the winner of the award named for the late Newbery Award-winning author.

The 2012 award went to Chris Rylander, the author of THE FOURTH STALL, a Godfather-esque tale for the middle school set. Think more toilets and fewer horse heads.

"The irony of this award is that everything I've ever written is intended to be serious," Chris said. "I never expected to be on stage accepting any award."

Chris thanked the many people who supported him, starting with his parents, who traveled from North Dakota and raised him "with books in my hands ... so that I learned to love to read on my own at a young age."

He thanked his agent Steve Malk, whom he queried in 2006 for an adult book--which Steve does not represent. (He read his query letter to Steve Malk, which included fake endorsements from Steven King, Dr. Seuss and other real authors.)

He thanked his editor Jordan Brown, who helped him transform the book and find its heart, despite the fact that he is a Yankees fan. And he thanked his team at WaldenBooks, and his wife Amanda "for giving me the best feedback I ever got about The Fourth Stall.

"It's really funny. It's really wonderful. But you made one major, major mistake."

"What's that?" he asked.

"Chris, you can't put the F-word in a middle grade book. Especially not 37 times."

"Turns out she was right."

Alan Silberberg, Sid Fleischman Award winner for MILO: STICKY NOTES & BRAIN FREEZE

Alan Silberberg holds the paperback version
of Milo: Sticky Notes & Brain Freeze

Sid Fleischman was one of the founders of SCBWI and a master of comic invention. He died about a year and a half ago, and the award continues in memory of Sid and in honor of humorous writing.

Lin Oliver, no slouch herself when it comes to funny, introduced us to the delightful and warm-hearted Alan Silberman, who won this year's award for his book MILO: STICKY NOTES & BRAIN FREEZE, about a 12-year-old boy who loses his mother, sneezes on the girl he secretly loves, and learns to live with both.

"Like all great comedy, it has its basis in the human heart," Lin Oliver said. "From the moment we meet Milo we know we're in the presence of a hero who teaches us that humor and hope are the antidotes to grief and isolation.

He shared episodes from his writer's journey with us.

"My first book was pond scum," he said, not clarifying that POND SCUM was the title of the book and not his own personal post-publication review.
 
After that, he had a couple of false starts. He felt waves of panic until a bookseller asked him why he hadn't tried combining his cartooning and writing. Sort of like that little Wimpy Kid series.

That's when Milo was born. To get into the headspace of a 13-year-old, he had to travel back into his own memories ... to the time when he had braces and ate a forbidden Baby Ruth (with disastrous results), and to the death of his mother when he was 9 years old.

That's when he got the idea to combine humor and heartbreak so that he could tell the story of a funny kid living in a fog-filled emotional world. He wanted kids to laugh even as Milo dealt with that sadness, and to win a humor award for that means the world, he said.

For a description of his working relationship with editor Liesa Abrams, check out our recap.

He dedicated the award to his mother, Audrey Silberberg. And then we all cried.

• Visit Alan's site.
• Follow him on Twitter.

I fired my therapist: the author-editor relationship

Liesa Abrams and Alan Silberberg teamed up to discuss how authors and editors can best work together. Liesa is executive editor at Aladdin, and Alan is the Sid Fleischman Award-winning author of MILO: STICKY NOTES AND BRAIN FREEZE.

Even before the session started, we could see the deep rapport these two have. No wonder they fired their therapists.

MILO is about a quirky, weird wonderful boy coming to grips with the death of his mother, something Alan related to because he experienced that loss as a child. Initially, he thought the book was going to be funny, but as he delved deeper into his memories, the book got more serious.

"The book has changed my life in so many ways," he said. "My life changed because my agent was able to take this manuscript and hand it over to Liesa."

Liesa related to the book because it was her husband's story, as well. His own mom died of cancer, and he'd spoken about it in similar ways. The closest thing she could come to healing her husband's loss was to work on this book. She really, really wanted to work on it and felt anxiety that it might not come to pass.

"This is the book that will make me feel my entire career has meaning if I can edit this book."

He read from the editorial letter Liesa wrote him, and we all got choked up. "I hadn't just found a way to get Milo published, but I had found this connection with this personal story."

One challenge was to separate themselves from the story a bit. Alan, who illustrated MILO, experimented with characters that looked less like him. Being able to have Liesa put a little distance between himself and the material allowed him to edit it from a safer place.

"I don't mean to get all therapy on you," he said, "but I really needed to feel safe to go back into these memories."

Liesa gave an example of how they shaped the story: the Milo character wrote about headaches making him think of drafting a will. It's not a kid point of view to think that way, so he wrote that Milo felt scared instead.

Liesa never asked which scenes were autobiographical (they were all emotionally true, but some were fictionalized). She was glad to have that distance, which let her look at it as a work of fiction.

"The reader only knows what's there on the page. They're reading that book. You're not there. It's not that actions can't be contradictory--you have to understand why the character is contradicting themselves."

"It's not just about the advance and the royalties," Liesa said. "It makes a world of difference to have a relationship like this... the writing is the most personal thing you can do."

Alan and Liesa made us all cry when they talked about the healing this book had brought about. “Not every editor relationship requires tissues, you know.”

Sid Fleischman Humor Award Winner: Allen Zadoff

The Sid Fleischman Award is an award for exemplary writing in the genre of humor. The 2010 Award goes to FOOD, GIRLS AND OTHER THINGS I CAN'T HAVE author Allen Zadoff.

He said, it wasn't so funny being a 275 pound high school student like he was. When he wrote about FOOD, GIRLS he didn't write it to be funny, he wanted it to be the truth. He wanted to share the lessons, as an adult, that he learned from his adolescence. He said his character learned in two weeks what it took him 35 years to figure you.

He advises everyone to keep at it and to come to the SCBWI conference and meet people. And if you win an award, make it the Golden Kite, so he can get the Sid Fleischman again next year. He thanked his editor Elizabeth Law at Egmont (who had invited him to a past conference and introduced him people in the industry).

Look for Allen's next funny book MY LIFE, THE THEATER, AND OTHER TRAGEDIES (Egmont, May 2011).