Kids' Choice Awards, Part 2: Big Kids

Here's part 2 of the Children's Choice Award overview for my state. Part 1 is here.

Genevieve asked in the comments of the last post why all this year's Picture Book nominees had copyright dates of 2004 or 2005. The simple answer is that the nominees for each year's award are required to have copyright dates of two or three years earlier. There are similar rules for the chapter book awards below.

Basically, this is because books are nominated by teachers and librarians and kids, and they need to have had time to find an audience. Older books aren't eligible because theoretically they had their chance earlier, and (I think) to keep the award feeling fresh (I've often thought of conducting a school-wide "favorite dusty old book" award some year, for which only books published at least 10 years earlier would be eligible, but have never managed to put it together). Also, with the chapter book awards, it helps if at least some of the nominees are available in paperback, as many libraries (including mine) buy multiple copies of each.

All the awards below are given to chapter books or novels, with the occasional nonfiction title thrown in. Unlike the Picture Book award, these are designed for kids who can read the books themselves (though teachers are encouraged to read nominees aloud, too); anyone in the age range who reads two nominees can vote.

Sasquatch Awards, officially for any grade but most of the kids who participate are in grades 2-6. They read at least 2 of the chapter books on the list and vote for their favorite. Votes due in by April 1; haven't heard about next years' list yet. This award tends to skew younger than the better known Young Readers Choice Award, so I'm more comfortable promoting it to 2nd and 3rd graders who are strong readers. I like that this award includes shorter chapter books for kids who aren't necessarily strong readers but are sophisticated enough to enjoy a novel.

Evergreen Young Adult Book Award, for grades 7-12. These are mostly hard-core YA: lots of Serious Issues and swearing and suchlike. This year, the nominees included Runaways, a graphic novel about teens who discover that their parents are supervillains, and Chanda's Secrets, in which a teenage girl in Africa discovers that the AIDS crisis has hit her family, as well as more innocuous titles like Airborn. I loved all three of these and would have had a hard time choosing among them were I a teen in grades 7-12. Though I think I might've gone with Airborn.

The Evergreen people like to make life complicated by setting the deadline for getting ballots in at March 15th, so our school's 7th and 8th graders voted last week. Based on their ballots, I'm predicting The Supernaturalist (which I never did get around to reading) will win.

And last, but far from least, there's the venerable Young Reader's Choice Award, the oldest children's choice book award in the country.

Unlike the other awards, the YRCA is conducted all over the Pacific Northwest: Washington, Oregon, Montana, British Columbia, Alberta, Idaho, and Alaska. This makes it the only international readers' choice award that I know of, and explains the frequent and welcome presence of Canadian nominees on the lists. (The wartime spy story Camp X, for one, has had a continuing fan base in my library ever since it was up for the YRCA a few years ago.)

The YRCA comes in three flavors: Junior (grades 4-6), Intermediate (7th-9th grade) and Senior (grades 10-12). The Intermediate nominees tend to come in a bit younger than the Evergreen Award books, and the Senior a bit older, though there's lots of overlap. Younger kids who read books in the older categories can vote for those awards (at my school it's not unusual for 6th graders to have read more of the Intermediate nominees than the Junior ones), but older kids can't vote younger.

And if that isn't confusing enough, because all these awards are organized by different organizations, it's not uncommon for the same book to be nominated on a couple of different lists (Airborn and The Supernaturalist, for example, are up for YRCA as well as Evergreen this year). The resulting overlaps are sometimes baffling (like last year when The City of Ember was nominated for Sasquatch (grades 2ish-6ish) and also for the Intermediate YRCA (grades 7-9, supposedly), though it's nice for librarians with a limited budget who want to conduct lots of awards.

Is your head spinning yet? Mine is. Now I remember why I'm totally beat every year by Spring Break.

But there's no time to relax; the YRCA has just announced their 2008 nominees. Most of them are new to me, and I have to start reading.

Kids' Choice Awards: Part 1

The end of March is approaching, and that means one thing: librarians all over the Pacific Northwest are gathering student ballots for various readers' choice awards and sending them in to the bewildering array of awarding organizations, while anxiously refreshing those groups' websites to see if next year's nominees are announced yet.

As a librarian at a Pre-K through 8th grade school, I'm a bit award-happy and promote a bunch of them. Students like having a say about which book wins, and some get very focused about reading as many of the nominees as possible. For myself, the need to promote the books spurs me to read titles I might otherwise pass up--Saffy's Angel (it had a boring cover) and Runt (I'm not big on animal stories) are two that I'm sure I never would've picked up if I hadn't needed to booktalk them for the Young Readers Choice Award. I loved both books, and now recommend them all the time.

One award I've promoted for the last several years is the Washington Children's Choice Picture Book Award for grades K-3. Twenty picture books vie for one award. I've been reading this years' nominees [link is a PDF file] to all the K-2 classes off and on since the beginning of the year--3rd graders at my school get to hear some of them, and read as many others as they can at checkout time and if they finish projects early. Voting will be coming up right after the book fair loads out.

I started out with mixed feelings about this award--so many books to get through! Wouldn't it just take over my curriculum? And what if I didn't like them?--but have grown fond of it over the years. One effect of promoting it is that it creates a sort of canon of picture books that all kids within a few years of each other know about. In many years there are cults that develop around particular books, and every once in a while I'll hear older kids reminiscing about a Children's Choice nominee of their distant youth.

The kids take their votes very seriously. And the winner almost always surprises me; last year it was Arrowhawk, the true story of a wild hawk who survived for several weeks with a poacher's arrow stuck in his leg before being rescued by raptor specialists. I would've thought the book was too intense and even gory to appeal to many younger kids, but they were fascinated and voted it in at my school and all over Washington State.

I have my suspicions about this year's winner, but as always, it's hard to tell. I won't handicap it until the votes are in, for fear of jinxing it. And I can't wait to see what next years' nominees will be.

*Coming up tomorrow: Readers' Choice awards for older kids

Scholastic Book Fair: 1. bookbk: 0.

Personal anecdotes are not the focus of this blog, but it does seem relevant to note in this space that the Scholastic Book Fair literally attacked my brain today.

I was roving around the library, checking the good-stuff-to-licensed-crap ratio in the big prestocked bookcases, when a dictionary leaped from its spot on display atop one of the cases and fell on my head, hard pointy corners first.

It didn't quite knock me unconscious, but it sent me reeling and hurt a lot more than you'd think. I've been dizzy all day. I think I have a concussion.

It's hard to avoid suspecting that the Spirit of Scholastic Books, Inc. was exacting vengeance on me for hiding the Bratz books and moving the Barbie Activity Set to an inconspicuous spot. So the question is: what would be a suitable act of reprisal?

Amazon Links: The Devil's Handiwork or A Boon to Readers? Discuss.

Once again a post at Fuse #8 has springboarded me to a post of my own. Actually it's the comments that have me in a tizzy.

As a lone librarian at an independent school, in charge of 12+ classes a week, reference, school-wide events, collection development, the works, I frankly rely on Amazon.com for quick reviews. Gone are the days of paging leisurely through SLJ: if I hear about a book, I look it up on Amazon and see what the consensus is. Some years ago I bit the bullet and started an Amazon Wish List for the school library, so parents can donate books in honor of kids' birthdays and the like.

But when I order a book for myself or for a gift, I go independent. I've worked at two different independent bookstores (one sadly defunct, one still cheerfully hand-selling away right in my neighborhood) and can't stomach handing my own money over to the behemoth that helped kill the Red and Black Books Collective. I've occasionally stepped into a Bunns & Noodle to spend a gift certificate (all hail Alison Bechdel for inventing that nickname) but always feel guilty and furtive when I do.

A couple months ago, Jody at Raising Weg wrote a cogent, convincing post about the value of the big chains, especially in areas that hadn't had any bookstores before. It almost convinced me that objection to chains was an elitist stance. Then I read posts like this, and I rebel: no one person should have that much power over what gets published (Clamouring Hour, anyone?*). I realize that brick-and-mortar chains and Amazon aren't really the same thing, but from my independent-bookstore-loyalist perspective they're two of a kind.

As this is a book blog, I expect to be discussing many (wait for it) books. And I expect that the odd reader or two might want to buy a title they see here. A link to Amazon will hook up those readers with a passel of editorial and reader reviews, plus referrals to other similar titles. If I link to Powell's, they get none of that, but they might buy from an independent. Lots of people I admire in the kidlitosphere link to Amazon and even have Amazon stores on their pages, so I guess I could, too. But I haven't been able to bring myself to.

Truth is, I feel a little silly twisting myself up over this moral dilemma when the readership of this blog numbers in the low two digits, and when I use Amazon all the time as a book-information source. But if you think this is tortuous, you should've been there for some of those bookstore collective meetings.

In any case, advice and opinions are welcome. So far I've been begging the question by not linking anywhere, but that seems like cheating, no?

*Gratuitous Fly By Night reference

Happy Teens, Happy Tech, Happy Week

The Brookeshelf reports that it is Teen Tech Week, and what do you know-- I inadvertently celebrated by downloading a teen audio book from my local public library this weekend for the first time ever. I feel very hip. And topical.

The book I'm listening to oh-so-topically on my computer is A Brief Chapter in My Impossible Life, by Dana Reinhardt. So far, so good; I like it (though I'm wondering what the adoption community thinks of it). But I'm only about one-third of the way through it because, although I am hip enough to download an ebook, I am not quite hip enough to have an Ipod. So my laptop gets dragged around the kitchen with me on a stool as I listen and do dishes and make lunches and occasionally trip on the headphone cord. Not earbuds, mind you: big puffy headphones. Because I am just cool like that.

For Kids Who Don't Fit on the Story Rug

The Cooperative Children's Book Center at the University of Madison has a terrific list of Picture Books to Share With Older Children and Teens. (Thanks to Fuse #8 for the link)

Truth is, you can read almost any well-written picture book to older kids and even teenagers if the context is right and if they trust you and know that you know that they're smart. I've seen cooler-than-cool 5th graders beg to read Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, shouting "No!" at the pigeon with as much verve as kindergarteners. (Well, they're in 5th grade, after all, so some of them shout "Yes! Go on! Drive the bus!" But they have a good time while they're doing it.)

But there are some picture books that will engage their sophistication and intellectual background right off, and that even a complete stranger (like a visiting librarian or substitute teacher) can get away with. Here are some that didn't make it onto the CCBC list that I'd recommend for kids in 4th grade up through middle school:

• Bunting, Eve. Smoky Night. Prejudice and rioting in a multi-ethnic neighborhood. Incredibly gorgeous collage illustrations.

• Fleischman, Paul. Weslandia. The 6th grade teacher at my school uses this to introduce her Ancient Civilizations unit.

• Giovanni, Niki. Rosa. Finally, a Rosa Parks biography that features the nitty-gritty work of the Civil Rights Movement--meetings and mimeographs along with the civil disobedience and rallies--and makes it clear that Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King didn't exist in a vacuum. Beautifully told and stunningly illustrated, too.

• Innocenti, Roberto. Rose Blanche. A wordless Holocaust parable with a devastating ending. Actually, there are several amazing Holocaust-themed picture books out there that I wouldn't read to most groups under fourth or fifth grade.

• Laden, Nina. Roberto, the Insect Architect. A termite with a dream comes to the big city. Many sly references to famous architects and media figures.

• Polacco, Patricia. Pink and Say. A family story from the Civil War. Most of Polacco's other books have more than enough depth to intrigue an older audience; this one is one of the few that is just too wrenching to read to most younger groups.
  

• Seuss, Dr. The Lorax. Our 7th graders put The Onceler on trial every year, with this book as Exhibit A.

• Shannon, George. The Secret Chicken Club. The animals of Wise Acres Farm aren't quite as smart as they think they are.

• Sherman, Allan. Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah. A classic, finally illustrated. Best shared along with a recording of the song, though I once just sat and turned the pages as a class of gleeful 5th graders sang this book to me, complete with Yiddish-inflected word endings.

• Smothers, Ethel Footman. The Hard-Times Jar. The oldest daughter in a family of Black migrant workers longs to have a book of her own.

• Stewart, Sarah. The Gardener. Younger kids enjoy this book too, but older ones will appreciate the depth of Lydia Grace's courage and resilience in what's really a pretty grim situation.

• Wisninewski, David. The Secret Knowledge of Grownups. If you have time and inclination, kids can write their own "Secret Knowledge" explanations.

• Wisninewski, David. The Golem. Another cut-paper masterpiece by Wisinewski, retelling a dark tale of medieval anti-Semitism. Mary Shelley was inspired by this legend when she wrote Frankenstein.
  

• Yorinks, Arthur. The Flying Latke. Funniest. Chanukah. Book. Ever. For those who appreciate Borscht Belt farce. Film afficionados will recognize a few familiar faces, too.

• Zelinsky, Paul. Rapunzel. Closer to the Grimm's original than most retold versions, this one includes Rapunzel's pregnancy with twins.

So Meta it Will Make Your Head Explode

Not related to children's books at all, and only tangentially to libraries, but this brief piece in the New Yorker completely made my day yesterday [ellipses and emphases are mine]:

EDITORS’ NOTE:

The July 31, 2006, piece on Wikipedia, “Know It All,” by Stacy Schiff, contained an interview with a Wikipedia site administrator and contributor called Essjay, who...was described in the piece as “a tenured professor of religion at a private university” with “a Ph.D. in theology and a degree in canon law.”

...Essjay now says that his real name is Ryan Jordan, that he is twenty-four and holds no advanced degrees, and that he has never taught. He was recently hired by Wikia—a for-profit company affiliated with Wikipedia—as a “community manager”; he continues to hold his Wikipedia positions. He did not answer a message we sent to him; Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikia and of Wikipedia, said of Essjay’s invented persona, “I regard it as a pseudonym and I don’t really have a problem with it.”

(Okay, maybe this wouldn't have everyone on the floor gasping with laughter. Maybe to think it's as funny as I do you have to have spent huge chunks of time, breath, and keystrokes in attempts to convince students and teachers alike that Wikipedia is not a citable source for academic projects? Could be.)

I have a particular fondness for that kind of deadpan tone that the New Yorker does so well. Especially when imparting news of a spectacularly embarrassing nature.

For the complete text of the retraction, see the note at the end of this article, or page 10 of the March 5, 2007 issue of the New Yorker.

Library Web Design Geek Moment

I don't spend much time browsing around in bookstores or libraries any more, and only partly because I work at one. Mostly, I find books I like online, and then reserve them online, for work and pleasure. This afternoon I spent an hour or so with three windows open on my work computer: one for surfing around the kidlitosphere for reviews and recommendations and awards, one set to my local public library so I could put reserves on for books I want to read, and one on amazon.com so I could update my school's wish list, enabling parents who want to donate books in honor of their kids' birthdays to browse and buy and send the books right to my hot little hands, where they'll (the books, not my hands) be cataloged and stamped and covered and adorned with a nice bookplate noting the kid's name. (And at a different time in my ordering cycle I would've had a fourth window open, so I could add books to my order list with the vendor I usually use. But we're about to have a book fair, so I'll wait.)

When I stop and think about it, it's weird to do all this reserving and buying and donating without ever touching an actual book until it gets bought or comes in on reserve. It means that library web sites (and bookstore sites, too, but I'm a librarian so I'll stick with libraries) are the front door, the welcome sign, the New Books display and the reference area for most patrons. For me, all I need to know about the actual library is where to pick up the reserves and where to do self-checkout; the website is where I do my browsing and database searching and actually use the library.

Even though I work at a school library, the same holds for a lot of my patrons-- especially the middle school kids, who (like many adults who use libraries) have Web access and busy lives. So I try to make as much as possible available via the library website: our catalog, links to public library catalogs and online reference sources, some information about the library, and some booklists. This is pretty bare bones for a library site, and I know I could do a lot more.

Not surprisingly, I am far from the first person to think about this. The Library Success Best Practices Wiki has a ton of resources on library website design. I guess it's a measure of my library geekitude that I just spent a while on the browser emulator, checking to see what bookbk looks like on, say, NCSA Mosaic, or Netscape Navigator circa 1995.

More practically, the "Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design" should make just about every librarian cringe--especially Mistake #1, which is perpetuated by most library catalogs. By this measure, the old card catalogs were actually easier to use. Progress really means that we all have to know how to spell everything, apparently.

This concludes our Library Web Design Geek moment. We'll be back to books tomorrow. Though of course they'll probably be books that I found through some website or other.

The Bookloft Strikes Again

Who are these people at the Charlotte-Mecklenberg Library? And who are the incredibly game teens appearing in this best YouTube Summer Reading Program Video ever?

Think about it: When you were in high school (or middle school, by the looks of some of these kids) would you have let anyone film you--for the viewing pleasure of your classmates and zillions of anonymous strangers on the Internet--singing show tunes and getting whomped on the head by flying books? All while flogging the summer reading program at the local library??

I don't think I'll see anything nearly this amazing on the Oscars tonight.

"I meet Jesus!!!! and he reads!!!"

The good people of The Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenberg County must be doing something right to get a comment like that on their library's MySpace page for teens. In fact, their whole LibraryLoft teen website is something of a knockout, in terms of both design and content. Check out their resource page on "Life Info: When Life's Not Always Easy or Fair." Well-organized, easy to navigate, and just plain gorgeous. I wouldn't be surprised if it's saved a couple of lives somewhere.

PLCMC might be exceptionally groovy , but they're not the only ones trying to get down with the kids through MySpace. There's a whole list of teen library MySpace pages at the Library Success Wiki. The YAAB (Young Adult Advisory Board) at the Fort Vancouver (WA) Regional Library District gets points for friending YA authors like Meg Cabot and Brent Hartlinger, but points off for the annoying song and a background pattern that makes the text almost impossible to read. Pawtucket Library's page isn't flashy, but has lots of useful info presented in an accessible way.

Even ALA is onto the MySpace trend; last year in New Orleans they passed this very formal-sounding "Resolution in Favor of Online Social Networks." Very nice, even if it doesn't answer that eternal question: if Jesus had a MySpace page, who would He friend????