The second graders made their individual selections on Friday and I used those choices to create a final top ten (we have been revising our top ten each week since the unit began). We then used this list to rank our top three this morning (before the announcement) and ended up with a medalist and three honors.

Winner: A Home For Bird
Honors: The Sandman, Big Mean Mike, and Island, A Story of the Galapagos

All four classrooms had different winners which was so interesting to see the differences in the opinions and interests of the classes. A Home for Bird was my favorite all along and I tried hard not to swing any votes its direction, but I almost wonder if I read it aloud with more passion due to my love of the book!

We watched the awards this morning and cheered for all of the winners. Luckily, we had read all 6 that were recognized and although none of our picks were chosen, we were thrilled with the outcome.

I introduce the award to our 3rd graders, and work on enhancing their understanding each subsequent year. One of the joys of this unit is to see how much studetnts’ appreciation for the award and picture book art grows through the years.

This year, I had a collection of thirty 2012 picture books to consider. I don’t “weed” books from consideration because seeing the range of artwork helps kids understand the differences and clarify the difference between a favorite book or author and a book with distinguished artwork.

I divide the classes and books into three groups, and each week for three weeks, my third and fourth graders read and evaluate one set of books using a 1 to 3 star rating scale. My 5th graders no longer come to regularly scheduled library classes, so their teacher scheduled them in for an hour in which they moved through all three sets. Not ideal – but better than nothing!

After all the kids have seen and rated all the books, I simply tally the 3-Star ratings to determine our “School Winners.” It’s not much like the process for the actual award, but the kids get excited about the voting – “Can we announce our winners at Community Meeting?” – and with that many kids participating – around 125 – discussing a short list really isn’t feasible. Although, this year there was a short list clearly evident: of the 30 books in the collection, 15 books garnered the majority of the 3-star votes in all three grades.

The run-away winner of our Mock Caldecott at the Oak Bluffs School this year was The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore. Joyce’s Man in the Moon was an Honor book last year, and the kids are standing by his artwork! (This will be the generation of children that grow up to award digital art as a matter-of-course, don’t you think?)

The stand-alone 2nd place book is Green.

And firmly holding third: Little Lost Tiger, by Jonathan London and Ilya Spirin.

To conclude our unit, we read aloud both the school winners and the real winners and I create a display of all the library books by the winning artists. That way, we can appreciate not only this year’s books but the body of work by the honored artists.

One of them e-mailed me (thank you Phillip) with the right list.
Phew. Thank goodness the 8 year old brains can help out my 50+ brain.

WINNER: Z is for Moose
HONOR BOOKS:
Abe Lincoln’s Dream
Chloe and the Lion
Extra Yarn

MEDAL—Chloe and the Lion
HONORS—Extra Yarn, Green, I Have a Dream, Ocean Sunlight, and Unspoken.

Surprisingly, we were able to get a winner on the first ballot, but just…Chloe got the minimum 12 first place votes we needed on our 22-member committee. The Honors were a bit harder…since the mean old committee chairman (me) wouldn’t let more than 5 honor books, we finally ended up going back to the voting results to take This Is Not My Hat out…it was the only one of the six not to have gotten any first place votes!

We start in mid-November with a journal entry answering the question of “What makes you go “wow” about a picture book?” The answers become a list that then introduces the idea of criteria. We then look at the real criteria, with the kids raising their hands for every word they don’t fully know the meaning of (quite a few…who wrote those things anyway?), and then we attack the dictionaries. Once we’ve found all the definitions, we can do a “translation” of the criteria.

Meanwhile, I’ve been scouring the internet and my librarian friends to come up with a milk crate full of books…this year we started with 27! We talk a bit about how to look at a book for Caldecott, look at some previous medal and honor winners, and then start looking at the contenders. At first, the kids are fast and not very discerning, but after a bit of time and hearing some of the observations and questions that some of the more eagle eyed kids and I make, they slow down and really get into the process. At first, I have them make notes, but then around the middle of December, I say no more notes…just read and be familiar with as many of the books as possible.

Right before the holiday vacation, I asked the kids for their list of five books that needed to be included in the discussions, any order. This first time having to make in-or-out choices was hard for some of the kids, and it was amazing for me to hear their thinking about their choices! Any books not getting at least 2 votes were struck from the list, so we ended up discussion 20 books.

The discussions involve taking each book in turn and letting anyone who wants to speak either for or against it (or both) with me sometimes playing devil’s advocate, or asking them to clarify their thinking, or adding things I’ve noticed or have gleaned from discussions here and elsewhere online.

Once we’re done with all the discussions, we vote! Over the years, we’ve chosen the same winner as the real committee twice, and had some real winners as honors and vice versa several times as well. Now we wait to see what Monday brings!