The Beckoning of Lovely

If you don't already know Amy Krouse Rosenthal, let me introduce her to you. She's the author of surprising, unexpected books (Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life, for example, which comes equipped with its own theme song and two-minute short, as well as the children's classics-as-soon-as-they-were-released Little Pea, Cookies, The OK Book). She's a New York Times Book Review critic, the host of a Chicago Public Radio show called "Writers' Block Party," a greeting card creator, and the inventor, always, of radically delightful ways of seeing.

A while ago Amy produced a short film called "17 things i made," which was followed by an experiment—a call to viewers to meet her in Millennium Park on 8/8/08. Something special would happen, she promised. Those who came simply had to trust.

What happened that night was crystallized in a short film titled "The Beckoning of Lovely," which did a funny little thing to my heart when I first saw it. I'm not going to try to explain it. I'm simply going to say that, in a very difficult time, Amy asked the world to make lovely things—any lovely thing—and to send those things to her so that they might be considered for inclusion in a feature film. Amy gathered around her some of the best in every business and waited to see what might happen.

Today I'm joining Amy's Next Phase Team as, in her words, a Supremely Excellent Judge (International Panel). I've judged many things in my life—chaired the National Book Awards panel for Young People's Literature, chaired the PEN First Nonfiction Prize jury, sifted applications for the National Endowment for the Arts, took on a Family Circle poetry competition, judged the feature stories of the nation's university magazines, selected the winner of a University of Pennsylvania student essay contest. But I've never been involved in a project like this—never been asked to go to the very heart of lovely—and I find the challenge exhilarating.

Stay tuned.