I interrupt my neurotic checking of the voting progress for a little clarification and a plea.

FIRST,  the clarification. Over the past few days I have read or heard the phrase "list of Caldecott contenders" more times that I care to admit. Often people are referring to our puny list as THE list of Caldecott contenders. ANY picture book published in these here United States by a citizen or resident of  the USA is a contender. Period. Out little list is our little list. If you drag your eyeballs to September you can see how we wrestled the hundreds and hundreds of books down to a manageable few. We looked at reviews and the books themselves. We considered what you had to say. We tried to have different media represented. Lolly and I threw in a few titles that few had starred but we thought would be fun to talk about. We added a few more as more books were published and reviewed. We hoped we would stir a few of you up.

That's it. THERE IS NO LIST ANYWHERE OF THE CONTENDERS except in the hot little computers of the Real Committee. At this point, that list could be very very long (15 X 7 nominations=105) if there are no overlaps (OF COURSE THERE ARE OVERLAPS!)  or very short if every list was exactly the same. (AGAIN: NO!) They have the list and they alone. We are just having fun trying to figure out what they might be considering. Believe me, we will never know what they are thinking until the Monday announcements and then we will only know what is honored. Those other books? Even the ones which almost won an honor sticker? Nope, we will never know.

SECOND, the plea. Please, when you are voting, just vote one time. While we love social media and we encourage lots of voting, let's not have anyone rustling up votes from uninterested friends and neighbors. Just vote your heart. It has come to our attention that there has been a little social media vote grabbing and, while that might work on American Idol, we aren't really about that. We just want to know what our readership really thinks about the books, so, except for encouraging your book-loving friends to read the books and vote, let's not have any stuffing of the ballot. It skews the results and takes away from the fun.