Teachers & Writers Collaborative
Winner
Michael Bazzett, Minneapolis, MN, “Within Words”
Finalists
Cathlin Goulding, Oakland, CA, “When Twilight Falls: How Documentary Poetry Responds to Social Injustice”
David Herring, Tucson, AZ, “A Classroom for Old Men: Aging among Poems and Teenagers”
Michael Bazzett’s prize-winning essay and previous winners of the Bechtel Prize may be found here.
The Bechtel Prize is endowed by the Cerimon Fund in honor of Louise Seaman Bechtel (1894-1985). Editor-critic, author, and teacher of young children, Bechtel was the first person to head a juvenile book department established by an American publishing house. During her fifteen-year tenure as managing editor at the Macmillan Company (1919-1934), Bechtel shepherded production of more than 600 new books, marking a milestone in the growth and development of American literature for children. “Louise Seaman Bechtel had a contagious conviction of the importance of books for children,” said her close contemporary Virginia Haviland.
A noted critic, Bechtel was the children’s book review editor for the New York Herald Tribune from 1949 to 1957, and a frequent contributor to the Saturday Review and the New York Times. During her long career, Bechtel also amassed an incomparable collection of children’s books. Her collection (later donated to Vassar College and the University of Florida) exceeded 3,500 volumes, among them rare folk tales; Asian and African legends; Greek mythology; Aesop’s fables; tales from Shakespeare; and the work of early 20th century book illustrators such as Arther Rackham, Kate Greenaway, and Boris Artzybasheff.