Lin graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design and moved to Boston, where she received a contract for her first picture book, Ugly Vegetables (Charlesbridge, 1999). Ling didn’t know anyone in New York, but an old friend had put down post-college roots in Massachusetts: Grace Lin. Taking the next step meant moving closer to publishing centers in either New York or Boston. “It didn’t take long for me to realize that was where my passion was.”

“I learned so much-the most important thing being that I was always gravitating toward the children’s section,” she said. She found a job at Barnes & Noble in Oakland. Ling took a course in copy editing, “but I was really terrible at it.” She read her way through Making It in Book Publishing, by Leonard Mogel (“which I still have, by the way”), which advised aspiring editors to learn the business by working in libraries or bookstores. Publishing jobs in 1990s California, however, were scarce. “I was buying time, but while I was there someone said to me, ‘Well, you’re always reading. She also worked at the campus radio station and for a student magazine, but after graduating she still hadn’t settled on a career, so she took a job teaching English in Taiwan, where her parents were born. At UC-Berkeley, she majored in mass communication because the degree let each student create his or her own curriculum. That did not immediately lead to dreams of a career in publishing. “We craved stories about girls with dark hair.” Asian-Americans were few and far between in the books Ling grew up on. It was particularly satisfying, Ling said, because it was the kind of book that she and Grace, who met in elementary school in upstate New York, would have devoured as children: a book featuring characters who looked like them. Of course, I am biased, but it did sell really well.” Yes, I was a character, but it was so delightful, everyone loved it. “She didn’t tell me at the time what it was about, but the whole book was inspired by our childhood. “Years ago, when we were moving toward building our fiction list, I told Grace, ‘If you ever write a novel.’ and she surprised me by saying, ‘Actually, I have an idea,’ ” Ling recalled.

But she has one distinction very few editors can claim: she edited a book in which she was one of the main characters- The Year of the Dog, by Grace Lin (LBYR, 2006), a middle-grade novel that is an autobiographical slice of Grace and Alvina’s childhood friendship. White Read-Aloud Award, the Golden Kite, and several that have made the New York Times Best Illustrated list. In her 15 years at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, Alvina Ling has edited books that have won Newbery and Caldecott Honors, the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, the Coretta Scott King Medal, the E.B.

Grace lin the year of the dog