"You want to get me in trouble with my colleagues?" William Steig groaned when asked to name his favorite children's books. The 88-year-old New Yorker cartoonist and the author of a number of celebrated volumes including "Sylvester and the Magic Pebble" and "The Amazing Bone" turns out to be anything but an expert on the subject. "To tell the truth, I don't read children's books. I'm an adult. I just write them." Nudged a bit further, he allowed that the Babar series was "great," but again pleaded ignorance: "I honestly don't look at them unless a friend shows me something he did. That's my answer."

William Joyce | Katherine Paterson | Jerry Pinkney | Jon Scieszka