• Asked and Answered

Asked and Answered | July 14, 2015

The ECC Board asked their bosses “What place from a book would you go on vacation?” Find out where these industry insiders would go to while away the summer hours and start planning your imaginary trip!

“I would love to visit the idyllic Shire of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I was introduced to The Hobbit at around age ten by my uncle and godfather, who was a professor of children’s literature and an author of books about Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. When my uncle and I spoke about The Hobbit at family gatherings, the world and the characters of the Shire came alive in my imagination, and it was as if the relatives around us just disappeared! I had always been an avid reader, but thanks to Tolkien and my wonderful uncle, I became a lifelong lover of literature, and ultimately made a career in children’s publishing.”—Barbara Bakowski, Copy Chief at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

“There are different types of vacations and I love them all, but if I were going on a sight-seeing vacation I would want the tour bus to stop at Willie Wonka’s Chocolate Factory from Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It’s one of my favorite books. Dahl created a mysterious world filled with complex characters, fantastic machines, and tasty delights. I was not one of the original five lucky children to win a full tour of the factory, but it looks like now I’ll get my chance. The tour must be given by Willie Wonka himself and include a full chocolate-tasting buffet. I can’t promise that I’ll be able to resist taking a drink from the river of chocolate and “accidentally” falling in and getting swept away. “—Patrick Collins, Creative Director at Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group

“I’d like to vacation in a week-long version of the hour or two described in Jon Rocco’s picture book Blackout. The power has gone out on a sweltering summer night in New York City, and the denizens of an apartment building host a “block party in the sky”, grilling and dancing beneath the now-visible stars. On street level, ice cream is being doled out for free, and kids play in water spurting from a fire hydrant. The last line encapsulates the spirit of this dream vacation: “And no one was busy at all.” – Nicole Deming, Communications Director at the Children’s Book Council

“I loved the Winnie the Pooh books when I was a kid. My father would read aloud the stories before I went to bed, and the characters and setting remain vivid in my mind. It might sound strange, but I would love to visit the Hundred Acre Wood where the stories take place. I used to pore over the map on the endpapers, and I would know exactly where to go!  If there was any time left, I would pop over to Paris to visit Madeline! “—Jazan Higgins, VP of Cross-Channel Strategy at Scholastic

“I would travel to the Kingdom of Wisdom from The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster and illustrated by Jules Feiffer.” —Charles Kochman, Editorial Director at Abrams ComicArts

“Morocco—the way it’s described in an old book called Mischief in Fez. Exotic, magical, with a large-eared fennec fox that talks.”—Dinah Stevenson, Vice President and Publisher at Clarion Books

“I just devoured Brenda Bowen’s Enchanted August. The way she describes the beautiful Maine island on which the novel is set—the sights, the smells, the FOOD—makes me want to get into a car this very instant and drive north.”—Christian Trimmer, Executive Editor at Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

“I would vacation with the Penderwicks in their rental cottage on the beautiful estate called Arundel from The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy by Jeanne Birdsall.” —Adrienne Waintraub, Executive Director of School and Library Marketing at Random House Children’s Books