The Conferring of Honorary Degrees
Jennifer L. Holm '90

Citation Presented by Adrienne J. Su, Professor of English, Poet-in-Residence
Conferring of the degree by William G. Durden, President 

Jennifer L. Holm , we honor you today as a children's-book author and Dickinson alumna. You published your first book in 1999 and eight years later hold two Newbery Medals, the annual prize awarded by the American Library Association for the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children. Your first Newbery honored that first book, Our Only May Amelia , which drew on the diaries of your great aunt to portray a 12-year-old girl growing up in frontier Washington in 1899. The second Newbery recognized your most recent book, Penny from Heaven , inspired by your mother's Italian-American childhood in the 1950s. By drawing on family history, you acknowledge the wisdom of the classic advice “write what you know,” but you also take the crucial next step, which is to focus on the parts you don't know and imagine them fully.

Not only are many of your protagonists strong girls, at ease in contexts generally dominated by boys and men, like the wilderness or the western frontier, but also, many of your novels are set in the past. In addition to making for an engaging story, this combination conveys to young readers that strong female characters are not a recent historical development.

Also, the writers and artists in today's graduating class can take inspiration from your description of Dickinson College as the place where you “really started writing.” Your example shows that the writing life is not somewhere out there, waiting to begin, but right here, right now, on the blank page before us. It is our good fortune that your imagination continues to fill it with words.

Mr. President, I am honored to present to you Jennifer L. Holm, Dickinson class of 1990, for the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters.

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Jennifer L. Holm , upon the recommendation of the Faculty to the Board of Trustees, and by its mandamus, I confer upon you the Degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa, with all the rights, privileges, and distinction thereunto appertaining, in token of which I present you with this diploma and cause you to be invested with the hood of Dickinson College appropriate to the degree.

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