Everyone to the 68 National Book award. [applause] like most people here tonight i have always been an avid reader and i come from a family of avid readers and i have birthed at least one avid reader, the jury is still out on the younger ones. As an only child and the daughter of two only children it wasnt uncommon in our house to find everyone in separate corners, each of us buried in a book. Huge nerds, you might have called us. Its a privilege to be in his room full of huge nerds. I feel right at home. My mothers father was a rare book dealer in chicago so the nerd gene goes back even farther in my family. One year there was a terrible fire and my grandfather store and the fire itself didnt reach the volume the fire hoses did. Water, water, everywhere. His whole inventory ruins and my grandfather felt he had no choice but to close up shop. My grandparents packed up and moved to the ozarks in the heart of missouri where my grandmother was from and they both were effectively retired at that point but my grandfather maintained a sideline of mail order books which he operated from their basement. As a new york city kid the country for grandparent time i would come down daily to play in their basement which held my mothers old dollhouse, my grandmothers home Canned Fruits and vegetables and rows and rows of my grandfathers 8foot high bookshelves crammed full of their treasure. I grew up playing between the stacks, the site, the intoxicating musty smell in the presence of books infusing so many of my missouri childhood memories and it wasnt until many years later that i would come to appreciate how metaphorically apt that was. A love of books was foundational in my own life and it is important to me now as i expect it is important to all of you that we perpetuate a culture that values and celebrates literature in the world that books are able to open to us. [applause] the National Book award is a huge part of that mission and it is thrilled to be here with everyone tonight recognizing exceptional literature and increasing the visibility of books which are among the most powerful weapons have against what has lately felt like an often hostile world. I think this past year has felt overwhelming and disheartening toan many people and it is a alo felt exhausting. For women, for people of color, for immigrants, for muslims, for the Lgbt Community and for so many groups. To remain on t the defensive and nearly every o waking hour takes its toll. For some of us books provide a welcome escape into someone elses world and for others they serve as a valuable resource for arming ourselves with indispensable knowledge of history but all books offer something we need so desperately right now. Brought into perspective. Books allow us to view circumstances through the eyes of someone else and they cultivatee a busy and they inspire action and they make us feel less alone and expose us to experience we couldnt imagine on her own. Books matter in tonight helps remind us of that. [applause] tonight is the night to celebrate so let us get started with the honoring. The first of theon words presend tonight our Lifetime Achievement awards to makef sure that we kik things off the general sense of inferiority for the vast majority of attendees. We begin by honoring a man service to the Literary Community is unparalleled. The first of these Lifetime Achievement awards is literary and award for outstanding contribution to the american Literary Community which has given annually to a group or person who has proven a remarkable dedication to expanding the audience for books ande reading. Here to president the literary and award is none other than president bill clinton. [applause] i have to read your bio, sir. I know there are applauding. Hold on. William jefferson clinton, wait, hold on. Well, here he is. Here is bill. [applause] please, sit down while i tell you a little bit about the president. William jefferson clinton, the first democratic president in six decades to be elected twice, led the United States to the longest economic expansion in American History i including the creation of more than 22 million jobs. You can set for that. [applause] after leaving the white house president clintonon established the Clinton Foundation in order to continue working on the causes he cared about. Since its founding the foundation has endeavored to help build more resilient communities by developing and implementing programs that improve health, strengthen local comedies and protect the local environment. President clinton serves as ther top United Nations envoy for the indian ocean tsunami recovery effort, the Un Special Envoy to haiti and its partner numerous times and president s George Hw Bush and george w. Bush to support relief efforts communities devastated by natural disasters. President in was born in arkansas and lives in new york with his wife, secretary Hillary Rodham clinton. [applause] thank you very much. First of all, i owe cynthia an apology for barging in but i thought i was being introduced. Im sorry. [laughter] glad to be here. I thank you for having me in at the special honor for me to be able to president this award to dick robinson, the president and ceo of scholastic. I love this crowd. I love the authors and artists, the editors, the agents, the publishers and all the other groups of people who make it possible for books to become reality. If any of you are willing to welcome you to come to our home and try to organize ours so we can walk through the halls. Hillary and i live in this farmhouse and we keep trying to find newew places to put our books. We are about to get to where we have to take to the paintings on the wall to build more bookshelves. I only have three minutes. [laughter] maybe four. I come from a family of voracious readers inn the last two years the craters. The other two, except for my first book, sell better than i do. I think that everyone who likes to read should have a good appreciation for what it takes to bring a book together and get it to the readers. It is the greatest model of Creative Corporation i can think of and its the way american and the world should work. Tonight you get the literary and award people who have made reading important, possible inaccessible for as many others as possible who actually connect authors to readers and in many diverse ways. Nobody deserves this more than dick robinson. Because of him, scholastic has, among other things, been a wonderful partner with our foundations too small to fill project started by hillary and chelsea several years ago to make reading an important part of talking, singing, storytelling to young children. 80 of his brain is formed by the age of three. We now know that by the age of four low income kids have on average heard 30 million fewer words than children from higher income families. Because of people like dick the gap t by race and income and the readiness to start school is closing rapidly. [applause] thanks to scholastic they have given literally hundreds of thousands of books, more than 700,000 just to our little projects for families to reach their kids when youre in a Doctors Clinic doing walter visit for what will soon be 5000 coin operated laundrys where parents that can afford a wash machine have to go and result in that time they are now filling them with books for what is already more than 80 new parks being built around america and will soon be many more that are now filled with books. I just got back from a tour of our project in baltimore, jacksonville and st. Louis and in baltimore is someone like me who shows up in the year to lead him by the hand again mature in the designated leader was a 40 yearold mother of a four yearold child. She said i got started at this late and tragically her husband was four years older than she was in he died of heart attack one night in sleep. Here she is and she wakes up in the morning and has to bury her husband and isba a single mom. This young daughter was unbelievable. She was so literate and she said i read sixten books a day to my daughter and my husband was very pleased with the way we were raising her so i intend to continue this part with these books will help me do so. Just about every human being knows down deep inside that if you have a child and raising a child is your most important j job. Grateful for dick for personal reasons. He said hillary and me copies of the harry potters books wouldnt have to wait in line at the bookstore. [applause] was one of those things that the establishment gets better so terrible. [laughter] ud a letter when i was president saying i should give ruby bridges, the National President ial citizens medal because her contribution in new orleans had been overlooked. She had a pretty tough life. I did im so glad i did. Its easy to overlook the good people. He sent chelsea books and eventually my grandkids. Reading to your children and grandchildren is about the neatest thing that ive ever done. I still get a great deal of pleasure out of it but i think about all the parents and grandparents who would never have been able to do that if it were not for you and scholastic and what you do. People who wouldve felt left out and left behind. Dick robinson has one whole bunch of words and he deserved them all but i dont think hes ever going to win one that will reflect his heart better because all over this country there are people who are forming new Neural Networks at the speed of light and stimulated by books that wouldnt be there were it not for his day job in scholastic and his commitment to this kind of philanthropic work. Its a good example of what i try to tell young people all the time and you dont have to be an elected office to do the public good. Private citizens can and they should and in a time of Great Division they must so i ask you to join me in congratulating the National Book foundations b17 literary and award for Outstanding Service and Literary Community to dick robinson. [applause] that is only one of the stories he told me backstage about books and reading in children. What a remarkable human being, president clinton. We all remember him as someone to talk to anybody and connect with them as if they were the only person in the world that is the way i feel right now. I feel like i should sit down and speak on my behalf and that would be the end of it. I do want to thank you for comingor here tonight and for pt of the family with three bestselling authors who he for two including a Childrens Book and tonight we really honor hi him he said it all, the champion of books and reading for all and for his consistent leadership on issues of literacy, education, freedom of expression and particularly, of course, his passion and compassion for young people which is so evident in the way he just talked to us. Thank you, president clinton. I wont sit down but i feel like i should right now. He also captured my wonder about the word literary in which im hesitant to share with the cabdrivers but im glad that im glad that he feels that somehow our Company Finds that word and the story about finding books everywhere is close to my heart and i wish he had not referred to my work as completely charitable because my shareholders are always criticizing me for that but, nonetheless, thank you president clinton. I want to thank the executive director, lisa lucas and determine David Steinberger [applause] you probably noticed this room is price as well as it used to be and thats because lisa and david and what theyve done and as well as the directors of the National Book foundation for technology and me in scholastic this year. Your leadership is making this organization and vital part of the reading culture that we honor tonight. I want to thank the 10000 people of scholastic around the world each of whom will tell you that their job to help children to read, as well as the Close Associates here tonight who have driven this Company Forward for many years including help on this short speech from two of my very closest friends. Here with me tonight are also hemembers of the Robinson Family who share the scholastic stories and since my father started the company in 1920 as the High School Magazine devoted to the best and the contemporary leadership and current social issues still are dna nearly 100 years later. Finally, as two important parts of my message tonight i am so proud to introduce and honor and i cant name them all but the 12 authors here who join me in creating the books the children love as well as the chancellor of city schools in new york city who teaches more than 1 million children to learn to read and understandhe so the creative bos in the schools and the distribution are all part of our story. I always wanted to be a writer and to be at these book awards i saw some great looking and great writers out there and getting pictures taken but i always wanted to receive the prize for a novel and i wrote several of them, unpublished. [laughter] now for reasons i will explain am so grateful to you for giving me the reading award instead. In my early 20s i became an english teacher and a Good High School and discovered that about a third of my students could read well enough, most of them really didnt want to read or did not read competently and often because the books they were assigned were not connected to their lives. This became a personal challenge to me how can i get more kids to read. After two years as a teacher i joined scholastic and we learned that the strength of c the compy was reaching directly into the classrooms to book clubs and magazines and getting an Immediate Response from students and teachers. This was an ideal platformm to make reading more exciting and more accessible kids that connected directly to their lives. Research shows that if children choose ande on their books they are much more likely to read this them and by publishing the right content deeply rooted in the Student Interest scholastic was privileged to be the link between the child, the school and the book, enabling teachers job it is to inspire children to read and love treat the scholastic mission then as now is to a engage all children and ensure that our books and magazinesne are easily accessibe and subject matter and reading level and in price and above all Student Interest. Through the years we worked hard to define books and topics that would reach children from different backgrounds and i have personally been working on what is now called diverse book for more than 50 years. Today we are keenly aware of the children in us schools are more economically diverse than ever before and the of the children are color and so more effort needs to be made to find a wide range of diverse experiences in order to reach our goal of reading for all. [applause] that is an old i story that is always new. We are an enthusiastic promoter of booksks and reading not justs a gateway to academic success but is a great way to learn more about your 600 south and we want to be. We happy to publish and sell awardwinning books and equally happy to find books that make you laugh because we know that reading for fun is likely to turn you into a lifelong reader. In choosing scholastic to be honored tonight you are also recognizingig the power of books not just as a machine but creative enterprise which operates at thes highest artistc level and to enter the world of the childs imagination. Brilliant artist and storytellers were here tonight work in fiction books, graphic novels and even will alternate illustrations and text to build a story. There is no formula what will work. To match the interests of the child with this great story are great characters is still the role of the story teller or artist. Books like goosebumps, captain, magic school bus, even harry potter and the hunger games all titles which are labeled Childrens Books have topped the alltime bestseller list for all books, children and adults and will certainly live for generations. These books have converted nonreaders into readers and have been reading available to all. These titles have contributed to the education of children byth enlarging the world and helping them think that higher levels is showing them the magic of stories that define what it is to be human and of nonfiction information to help them understand the world we live in. To carry out our goal scholastic reaches the schools to make books available to large numbers of children who do not have access to bookstores or libraries for reading because of their teachers and schools. The last 50 years we have sold than 13 billion copies of more than 100,000 titles. Mainly published by houses were in this room tonight including, course, scholastic. During this period are us classroom magazines have also circulated about 15 billion copies. America would be at a place without the influence of all this reading and lives of children. Most of this reading has taken place because of the pre k12 schools were millions of teachers work enthusiastically every day to help children learn to read. All schools should be equally equipped to educate children at a high level but, as you know, schools are thickly constrained by human and Financial Resources and provide unequal education depending on social class, zipeq code and access. Equal education is not only the law of the land but the only solution to maintaining a democratic society. We must all work to help her schools have the resources they need to lift all children. [applause] in the information world of the 21st century and as a childrens publisher and educator we look to the future and we see the world as it will be 20 years, 30 years from now when the children that are in school now are adults in citizens but in that world