The Oscars of Books (at least for youth librarians...)

Do you ever try to tell one of your non-librarian friends about the youth media awards?  While you get all excited about the winners and start gabbing about this award and that one like it's the Academy Awards, your friend naively asks, "there's that many awards for kid's books?"  Sadly, not everyone knows the awesomeness of the Youth Media Awards.

Well if you haven't had a chance yet to obsess over the winners and honors, check out the various divisions of ALA that sponsor each award.  The YALSA book awards include the Alex, Edwards, Morris, Nonfiction, Odyssey, Printz, while the ALSC covers the awards for the Newbery, Caldecott, Arbuthnot Lecture, Batchelder, Pura Belpre, Carnegie, Geisel, Odyssey, and Laura Ingalls Wilder.  For a comprehensive look, check out the alphabetical list of all ALA awards.

If your favorite book didn't make the cut, it may not be because members of the committee didn't also love it.  Although we all have our favorites, committee members are charged with following the criteria for their award.  Also the voting process can be complicated, as we learned during the mock Printz this year.  For more about the Newbery process, check out Monica Edinger's post on Nerdy Book Club, Top Ten Things You May Not Know About the Newbery Award.  Feel free to send some love to your favorite that did or didn't win big in the comments (I still love you Ask the Passengers!)

In addition to the awards announced at ALA, the best of the year is recognized in a variety of lists, such as the Great Graphic Novels for Teens, Best Fiction for Young Adults, Amazing Audiobooks, Fabulous Films for Young Adults, Popular Paperbacks, Quick Picks, Reader's Choice and Teens' Top Ten.  

Want a fast way to access all these lists when you are out and about?  Check out the Teen Book Finder App on the App Store.

A big thank you must go out to all the committee members that work so hard all year so we librarians (and kids too!) can reap the benefits of your efforts.

Irma Black Award

Last week the four finalists for this year's Irma Black Award were announced and my students and I were thrilled. That's because it is 1st and 2nd graders who are the final judges for the award, which is given to an outstanding book for young children. This year's finalists are I Want My Hat Back, You Will Be My Friend, All the Way to America, and What Animals Really Like. Over the next six weeks, we will be reading and discussing each of these books, voting on their favorite, and on April 9 the winner will be named and given this year's award.

Beginning in 1972, Bank Street College of Education established the Irma Simonton Black Award for Excellence in Children's Literature in honor of Irma Black, who was an influential teacher, editor, and author of more than twenty children's books, as well as non-fiction books for adults.  The award process begins with the children of Bank Street, where Irma Black spent part of her illustrious career. Students in the 4th and 5th grade are given 16 books to look through that have been determined by a group of librarians, teachers, and other committee members. These students eventually, narrow these 16 books down to 8, which are then given to the 3rd and 4th graders. These students then spend time reading and discussing the 8 semi-finalists, until the final four list is determined. At this point, registration is opened to schools all over the country and 1st and 2nd grade teachers and librarians can begin reading the books to their students. The fantastic Bank Street librarian and HVLA member, Lisa Von Drasek has an Irma Black Award Blog on School Library Journal's website, chronicling the whole process.

This is the first year that I am doing this with my students and I am extremely excited about it. The finalists were just announced on February 14, so we read our first book this week. Before this week, we began preparing by talking about other awards, who Irma Black was, looking at the semi-finalists, and reading last year's winner How Rocket Learned to Read. This week, I explained the process to them and thanks to Lisa's blog, got to show them great pictures of the kids at Bank Street, making it really come to life. We read our first book I Want My Hat Back and then gave them each a few minutes to write down some of their own thoughts about what they really liked about the book. Then we read it again and had a group discussion, sharing their thoughts on chart paper.

The kids are really excited about the process and taking it really seriously, with lots of thoughtful comments. It was wonderful to see how diverse their opinions were and how critically they were looking at the book. It's been a great way to encourage kids to explain the Why? behind their reasons for liking or not liking something in a book because in this case they feel like it really matters. I'm also looking forward to integrating math into this project because we are going to be collecting data and making bar graphs about the process to tie in with their classroom studies.

You can read in detail about the history of the award and the curriculum on Bank Street's website. You can participate by registering your school here.