Author Karen Hesse has garnered an impressive list of awards for her work, including a prestigious Newbery award, the Scott O'Dell Award, and two Christopher awards. In 2002 she added to those with a MacArthur Foundation "Genius" fellowship of $500,000 over five years, a no-strings-attached award that allows recipients to use the grant in whatever manner they see fit. Hesse is only the second children's author to receive a MacArthur fellowship, granted to people who, as Debra Lau Whelan noted in School Library Journal, "lift our spirits, illuminate human potential, and shape our collective future." The grant could not have found a worthier recipient than Hesse, author of a number of notable works that have, as the Foundation noted in its presentation, "expand[ed] the possibilities of literature for children and young adults." Responding to the award, Hesse commented in Children's Literature, "I was stunned when I heard...