And the Winners Are...

On Saturday the winner of the Black-Eyed Susan book award was announced.  It's Maryland's children's' choice award, and each year the students at my school eagerly await the announcement of the statewide winners.

We support and participate in this program in the lower school. All of our 1st and 2nd graders read the picture book nominees, and vote for their favorites.  This occurs during library class throughout February and March.

Our 3rd-5th graders can participate in the chapter book and graphic novel categories.  This takes the form of book clubs and is completely voluntary.  They meet during lunch time, and all reading is done outside of school.  My school is a boys' school so all of our readers are boys.  They must read a minimum of 4 of the 10 nominations in order to vote.  The clubs run from November through April.  This year we had 38 participants in the chapter book club and 30 in the graphic novel club.  This is from a pool of 95 3rd-5th graders. I couldn't be prouder of our students.

Our vote aligned with the state winner in the picture book and chapter book categories.  The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt and Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library by Chris Grabenstein were the winners in our school and the statewide winners.

We diverged when it came to the graphic novel category.  Our boys voted overwhelmingly for Cat's Cradle: the Golden Twine by Jo Rioux, but the statewide winner was Astronaut Academy: Zero Gravity by Dave Roman.  Astronaut Academy came in second among our voters, but it was a landslide win for Cat's Cradle here.