And the winner is ...

Award winning books are a treat to read and share with the students. With my younger students we've been focusing on the Caldecott winners. For the past few weeks we looked at the criteria, and I 'borrowed' a list from a fellow 'Busy' librarian Matthew Winner. The criteria can be simplified and is: books kids like, excellent illustrations, illustrations help explain the story and a really good plot.


During lessons I shared the 'Three Pigs' by David Weisner
and 'Creepy Carrots' by Aaron Reynolds. We used the criteria checklist to see if we could figure out why the books had one. Students had an opportunity to talk about plot and illustrations while sitting knee to knee. Then they put the criteria into practice, they used small checklists and selected their own books that they thought should be winners. I made the checklists into little bookmarks with a blurb at the bottom telling parents about the award in the hopes that they would discuss it at home.

As we move into our focus on illustrators, in preparation for our illustrator visit at the end of next month. Students spent some time browsing through a stack of about 30 award winning books and their task was to pick one picture they loved, copy it and explain why.

It was really interesting to see how students selected the same books again and again, and even the same picture. Their favourites were Blackout, Knuffle Bunny, Where the Wild Things Are, Whose Tail is This, Sector 7 and Fredrick. Their reasons were various: some loved the colours, mixture of mediums, or it was family/ classroom favourite.

As a librarian, my efforts to get these into the hands as many students as possible continues. The books are displayed in two places plus I've hung student work. I've also used an animoto video showing the kids with their work and this is played on a loop on the libraries digital display.

I hope a family finds a new favourite to love!