Confessions of a Kid Lit Fanboy

Posted January 29, 2014 by Alec Chunn

Let’s talk about fandom. Surely, there is somebody out there whom all of you are dying to meet. Yet, you’re probably also terrified of meeting this person, for fear of being tongue-tied, boring, or just all around beside yourselves (my grandmother, bless her heart, would use the phrase “tickled”). Well, a strange thing happened here at Simmons this semester: by some cosmic twist of fate, I am now taking a class from one of my heroes, Roger Sutton.

See, Roger doesn’t know that I idolize him. He doesn’t know that one of my biggest motivations to come to Boston was to someday be his intern (fingers crossed). He doesn’t know that, on the first day of orientation last semester, when I found out he’d be teaching this class, my jaw literally dropped and I had to pick it up off the floor. He doesn’t know that, that same day, I all-too-energetically ran to meet one of the members of his staff at The Horn Book. At least, I hope he doesn’t know these things. And I hope that, by writing them here, I’m not shooting myself in the foot.

The children’s book world is small and, as far as I’m told, it is a field dominated by women. Roger Sutton–like Brian Selznick, Gregory Maguire, and my all-time hero, Maurice Sendak–is someone who, by his very existence as a gay man in the field, showed me that, maybe just maybe, there might be a place for me in this small little world. Of course, Roger doesn’t know this either. I don’t want him to. But what he does know is my name. And that is enough for me. For now.

There’s a delicate balance you must strike as a fan. You never want to come on too strong (i.e. “Roger, I WANT TO BE YOU give me a job at your magazine please and thank you!”) but you also don’t want to feign too much disinterest (i.e. “Yeah, your work’s okay. I guess. I read an article once.”). I think that what you really have to do is treat your idols as people because, in the end, that’s all they really are. That’s all anyone really is.

As I left class Tuesday night, I felt as though the fact that I was able to be among the giants in my life–if only for a little while–would make everything else worth it. I may have left my home behind. My boyfriend. My family. But this singular moment, sitting in that classroom and hearing an insider’s stories of the publishing world, made everything worth it. No matter what happens in my future, I will know that I will always have Simmons. I will always remember these as the times I sat among giants and, more importantly, belonged.

I can’t guarantee that you’ll meet your hero at Simmons, but I can guarantee that–if only for a little while–you’ll be among giants. As hokey as that may sound, I honestly believe it to be true.