By Georgia Sparling
On Monday, author Andrea Wang's "Watercress" became only the fifth children's book to receive both a Newbery Honor for Wang's writing and a Caldecott Award for Jason Chin's illustrations. But it may be only the first to achieve those accolades and a tweet of "congratulations" from "Reading Rainbow" star LeVar Burton.
“HOLY SMOKES. My life is complete!" replied Wang, a 2011 graduate of our MFA in Creative Writing program.
"Watercress" has had a really good year since its March 2021 publication. A favorite of critics, it received starred reviews from Horn Book, Kirkus, Publishers Weekly and the School Library Journal. It was selected for a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor and Wang and Chin received the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature. The latter was particularly meaningful to the author, who based the book on her experiences growing up Asian American in the Midwest in the 1970s.
“It's semi-autobiographical, and it recounts a memory that I have that has haunted me for a long time of picking watercress by the side of the road in rural Ohio where I grew up,” Wang said on our Why We Write podcast in September.
Although readily available in China, her parents were unable to find it in stores at the time.
When they saw it growing wild “…they were thrilled, and I was very much not thrilled. And I just remember all these feelings of shame and embarrassment. And why was my family so different? Why didn't we belong? So, I wanted to write about those just to process it for myself," recalled Wang.
Andrea Wang ’11
Wang said she envisions the book as a catalyst for conversation.
“I think I say in my author's note that it's the hard ones, the difficult stories, those difficult memories that can really sort of bring you to a place of healing,” she said in the podcast interview.
The author's honest, poignant and tear-jerking text earned her the Newbury Honor, given to a select number of standout titles each year. And Wang has been quick to praise the way Chin depicted her story through his illustrations, resulting in this year's Caldecott award for the artist with the “most distinguished American picture book for children.” The Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association, awards both honors.
"His incredible, luminous, exquisite art not only brought the story to life but also brought lost family back to me," Wang tweeted on Monday. On the podcast, she praised Chin for his "amazing job portraying all of the emotions of the characters in ‘Watercress.’”
In addition to “Watercress,” last year Wang published the middle-grade book “The Many Meanings of Meilan,” a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection and a best book of 2021 from School Library Journal, the New York Times and the New York Public Library. Wang is also the author of the award-winning children’s books “The Nian Monster” and “Magic Ramen: The Story of Momofuku Ando.”