The 2018 Upstander’s Life Time Achievement Award will be going to Caldecott Medal–winner Mordicai Gerstein Mordicai Gerstein for his long career with special thanks for his book The Boy and the Whale, which he was inspired to write when he saw a real-life video of a whale’s rescue, and the creature’s joyful dance through the waves after being freed.
The Boy and the Whale is a expressive and perfectly paced story about a boy and his father discover a whale tangled in their only fishing net. Is the whale dead? While the man worries about losing their net, the boy worries about the whale. He remembers the fear he felt when, caught in a net himself in childhood, he almost drowned before being rescued by his father. When the whale blinks an enormous eye, the boy knows that he has to try to save the creature, no matter how dangerous doing so may be.
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