1. Start way earlier than you think you need to.
2. Go over the criteria. Make sure you REALLY understand what it all means and restate it in words that make sense to the age you work with.
3. Take time to read and discuss some previous award winners with the vocabulary of the criteria. This is the time to point out some of the parts of the book that kids sometimes miss: gutter, end papers, panels, full-page spread, media, etc. Make sure you have chosen illustrators who use watercolor, oils or acrylics, chalk, collage, etc and employ a variety of styles from loose to highly detailed, abstract to realistic. My little guys strongly prefer realism, so I need to talk about abstract, gestural, and other non-realistic art. Talk about computer generated art. It’s easy to miss this step, but I think it really allows the readers to see that lots of different styles have been honored.
4. Gather some books from the current year that you either really like or are getting a little buzz. Look at starred reviews and best-of lists if you need some direction. I am a teacher, so I always see what our librarians are ordering.
5. With a mock Geisel, I have the kids read the books on their own at first since I want to see if the books really work for new readers.
For all other committees, I read the books aloud and lead a general discussion of what we appreciate about the book. We then talk about our questions and concerns in a general way.
6. After reading 10-15 books, I let them linger in a basket in my classroom for a few days to see which books are chosen during Independent Reading time. I decide which books will become part of our discussion–usually 10 or 12.
7. After this waiting period, I pair or triple (is that a verb?) children up to look at the books more closely with a partner. There is some note taking, so I make sure that one of the members of the group is a fast writer. They have paper handy and I usually ask them to look at very specific things as they read the book together. Often, I have a handout for them to fill out (as a group) about each book they look at. The questions vary from year to year, but I leave a space for Title, Illustrator and author, Media used, favorite spread. I ask them to rate the book from 1-5. Then, there is a place for questions. (I no longer ask for concerns because second graders just love to tear a book to pieces and all that does is ruin the book. Older kids can surely handle it better.)
8. When done, they hand me the sheet and evaluate another book until most of the groups have looked closely at most of the books.
9. The next day, we sit in a circle and talk about the book one at a time. I see who loved which book and I assign each group a book to present to the class. They take 5 minutes to pull themselves together and then, one group at a time, we lead a CCBC style discussion (http://www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/books/discguide.asp) on each book.
10. Then we vote with weighted votes. Secret ballots; public counting. (On the board so they can all see the effect of the third place votes.)
11. Usually we have to do one more vote and then we name the winner and honor books.

Phew. It’s really a lot easier to just go on and run the committee than try to talk about it!

I picked the books by looking at the discussion list from this blog, several other discussion lists, and the list on Goodreads, and pulling all the titles our library actually HAS. That was a reasonable number to browse through in an evening– about ten. I know it’s quite likely that a book we DIDN’T have may win on Monday, but we haven’t got the budget to buy extra books just in CASE one might win.

If you wondered, SWIRL BY SWIRL won by a landslide among our 8 voters. I’m not sure if everyone was biased because one of our art activities just happened to be scratch-art, though!