The truth is that on another day I could have picked a different picture altogether. It didn’t have to be Anastasia Taylor-Lind’s image of a fisherman’s kids floating on the Yangtze. I could have chosen Rena Effendi’s haymaking out of a Bruegel painting, Michael Yamashita’s Suzhou opera singers through the curtain, Matthieu Paley’s Khan with his wife tiny in the snow behind him, Diane Cook and Len Jenshel’s canopy of cherry blossoms, David Guttenfelder’s North Korean performer crying for her nation’s leader, or Jonas Bendiksen’s ancient skier propped up by skis. I love them all. How can you prefer one child over the others?

And no offense, Anastasia, but