Writers Jacqueline Woodson, Maira Kalman and Jonathan Safran Foer are the judges of the NYC Neighborhood Library Awards, a competition funded by the Charles H. Revson Foundation and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, which will award $20,000 to the five winners.

In a segment on the Brian Lehrer show on NPR, author and illustrator Maira Kalman described how difficult it was to narrow down all of the libraries that were nominated to choose five winners.

The problem with being a judge is that it’s almost impossible to pick five libraries… every library in the city should getting at least $20,000, maybe $100,000. They’re all heroic. They all serve people. If you didn’t have a library it would be like like saying you don’t have a hospital go to go. It’s so critical for life. I think we were all crying when we were looking at these applications because the amount of passion and emotion in each statement about each library… they’re all so deserving. So let’s get more money for everybody.

Mayor Bill de Blasio came out with his budget proposal last week, and although an editorial in the New York Times made the case for the mayor to give libraries about 1.5 billion dollars of funding that they asked for over the next ten years, his actual budget fell short. Advocates are continuing to fight until the final budget is adopted in June.

Meanwhile, the finalist branches for the NYC Neighborhood Library Awards include Windsor Hill, New Lots, and Clinton Hill in Brooklyn; Cambria Heights, Sunnyside, and Langston Hughes in Queens; Mott Haven and Parkchester in the Bronx; Jefferson Market in Manhattan; and Stapleton Library in Staten Island. The winners will be announced by the end of the month.