Caldecott Medal
The award is named for Randolph Caldecott, a nineteenth-century English illustrator. Rene Paul Chambellan designed the Medal in 1937. The obverse scene is derived from Randolph Caldecott's front cover illustration for "The Diverting History of John Gilpin" (Routledge, 1878, an edition of the 1782 poem by William Cowper), which depicts Gilpin astride a runaway horse. The reverse is based on "Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie", one of Caldecott's illustrations for the nursery rhyme "Sing a Song of Sixpence".
Mr. Rabbit and the Lovely Present
Mr. Rabbit and the Lovely Present, written by Charlotte Zolotow and illustrated by Maurice Sendak, is a 1962 pictures book published by HarperCollins. It was a Caldecott Medal Honor Book for 1963 and was one of Sendak's Caldecott Honor Medal of a total of seven during his career. Sendak won the Caldecott Medal in 1964 for "Where the Wild Things Are", which he both authored and illustrated. "Mr. Rabbit and the Lovely Present" was re-issued by HarperCollins in 1999 in hardcover format as part of a project to re-issue 22 Sendak works, including several authored by Zolotow.