Ruth Anne Champion quit the hand bell choir this year because she couldn't spare the extra hour on Thursday nights. She turned down a New Year's Eve invitation from dear friends and swore off all television except Sunday afternoon football.
The search for timelessness, it turns out, takes an awful lot of time.
Champion is helping to pick this year's Newbery Medal winner, a book that will likely become a children's classic. Since the selection process started in January, the 49-year-old Enoch Pratt librarian has read some 400 kids' books.
"Books at work, at lunch, when I get home, always before bed, sometimes in the evening," said Champion, who selects new children's books for the Pratt collection. "Sometimes, I read before I get up."
New books continue to arrive even in these, the last days of the year. "I got a book yesterday," she said last week at her Pasadena home. Her blue eyes shone beneath graying bangs. "It is possible I will get more."
The Newbery committee met once last summer. Next month, its 15 members will reconvene in Boston for a weekend-long pow-wow before announcing their decision Jan. 17.
Cramming for finals
Although they can't discuss specifics, the judges are in the midst of compiling their short lists. It's crunch time for Champion, who finds herself cramming Newbery tasks into every spare moment, toiling at all hours in her living room beneath a lamp whose luminosity rivals the sun's. Even during the shortest breaks at work she hunkers down with picture books, rather than chat with colleagues or -- heaven forbid -- peruse a magazine or newspaper.
The only people who can really relate are the Pratt librarians who sat on the jury before her.
"I'm still trying to catch up from that year," said Debbie Taylor, the library's coordinator of school and student services, who judged in 2002. She recalls reading at the carwash, and while soaking in the bathtub.
"You brush your teeth and you read," said Selma Levi, the supervisor of the children's department and a former Newbery judge. "I still read books going down the stairs."
No Newbery newbie, it seems, quite grasps the enormity of the undertaking.
But Champion -- who once devised a form of Newbery Bingo to tout the winning titles -- welcomes the work and has taken to heart the responsibility of safeguarding a distinguished literary prize.
Medal of honor
