The National Book Foundation recognized Jarrett Krosoczka as a National Book Award finalist in New York City Wednesday. Hours later, the author and illustrator was at Kimball Middle School in Elgin, showing off his finalist medallion to students.
“I’m going to wear this all over the place,” Krosoczka joked; he was one of 25 recognized as a 2018 finalist, and only one of five recognized in young people’s literature.
Students and staff at the middle school library were impressed with the medal. Krosoczka explained to the students that it was not easy to get to this point in his career. His earlier stories were rejected by several publishers before he finally had a breakthrough with “Good Night, Monkey Boy.”
Even more challenging, he argued, was finally telling his childhood story of family and drug addiction through “Hey, Kiddo,” arguably his most personal book to date. Krosoczka spoke about his National Book Award-nominated graphic memoir with several dozen students, sharing details of his childhood, his family, confronting his past, and the creative process it took to get his story into print.
“This is a story I thought I might want to write,” said Krosoczka, 40. “It became a story I needed to write.”
Krosoczka’s mother, Leslie, succumbed to drug addiction — specifically, heroin. Her addiction and ensuing criminal matters left Krosoczka without a mother throughout most of his childhood and a father he barely knew. She is now deceased, overdosing from heroin, he said.
His grandparents, Joseph and Shirley Krosoczka, played the parent role most of the time, he told the students. They feature prominently in “Hey, Kiddo,” he said, as they helped provide stability in his childhood.
Drawing was another big piece of his childhood, Krosoczka told the teens. At first, the hobby helped impress friends, but as he matured in his teenage years, drawing was an escape.
“Drawing gives me peace,” he said.
Nowadays, Krosoczka is both drawing and writing. He said the two skills are “teammates” in telling stories. In the case for “Hey, Kiddo,” he re-invented his drawing techniques, as the more cheerful styles he incorporated into earlier work would not make sense for more serious, realistic topics.
He researched his childhood, revisiting moments from decades earlier and uncovering items from his past. Letters his mother wrote to Krosoczka ultimately influenced the title of the book, he said. His teenage sketchbooks reflected a teenager in turmoil, Krosoczka acknowledged.
“I’m looking at these sketches and I’m thinking, ‘Wow, this kid is really angry, really frustrated, and dealing with all of his emotions through art,’” he said.
“That’s the tough thing about life. There are difficult truths out there, they are affecting us and we have to acknowledge they are affecting us,” he told the students. “But luckily I had good friends, I had my grandparents, I had art — I had something I could completely bury myself into.”
Kimball Middle School was fortunate to bring in Krosoczka, as a more-publicized visit at Gail Borden Public Library occurred only a couple hours later. School librarian Marie Gatz said author visits are rare at the school.
“We need to reach out to the kids,” Gatz said. “We need to let them know they are not alone. And we need to let them know they can make something of themselves,” like Krosoczka did despite his childhood, she added.
She noted the relevance of the topic of heroin addiction as communities nationwide grapple with an opioid epidemic.
“Children are the invisible victims of this epidemic,” Krosoczka said.
