Walter Dean Myers

This year's National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, Walter Dean Myers "has produced an extraordinary body of work, including picture books, blues-inflected poetry, fantasy, biography and steely-edged realistic fiction," wrote The New York Times. A two-time winner of the Newberry Medal (for Scorpions andSomewhere in the Darkness), "he just commands a room," says Jon Scieszka. "Little kids, big kids, adults–everyone sits up when he starts speaking."