2013 Youth Media Awards

Yesterday the American Library Association (ALA) announced the winners of the 2013 Youth Media Awards.  Nineteen different awards were given to the best of the best in children's literature.  As I have done for the past several years I will document the biggest, oldest, and most prestigious of these awards:  The Caldecott and Newbery Medals.  A full list of today's awards and their recipients can be found here. 

Caldecott Medal

The Caldecott Medal is awarded each year to, "the most distinguished American picture book for children."  This year the award goes to This Is Not My Hat, written and illustrated by John Klassen.  In this follow-up to last year's I Want My Hat Back, which was the recipient of a 2012 Theodore Seuss Geisel Honor, Klassen has crafted a similar story involving an animal's stolen hat.  This latest offering had a new cast of characters, a new color scheme, and plenty of clever humor to keep audiences happy.  One of the coolest things about this picture book is the way that the illustrations really do tell the story, adding plenty of detail that the text alone cannot provide.

A whopping five books were given Caldecott Honors:

• Creepy Carrots by Aaron Reynolds, illustrated by Peter Brown
• Extra Yarn by Mac Barnett, illustrated by John Klassen
• Green by Laura Vaccaro Seeger
• One Cool Friend by Toni Buzzeo, illustrated by David Small
• Sleep Like a Tiger by Mary Logue, illustrated by Pamela Zagarenski

Newbery Medal

The Newbery Medal is given every year to, "the most outstanding contribution to children's literature."  This year the award goes to The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate.  This poetic, lyrical novel tells the story of Ivan, a silverback gorilla who lives in an exhibit at a mall.  Ivan has never really questioned his existence there and is happy enough drawing pictures with the crayons provided by his caretaker.  When a baby elephant is added to the mall's menagerie, Ivan suddenly realizes that he needs to find a better home for his new friend.  The language in this book really makes it stand out from the crowd as it brings Ivan's story to life.  The emotional story - based on real-life events - will warm your heart and bring a tear to your eye.

Three books were awarded Newbery Honors:

• Splendors and Gloom by Laura Amy Schlitz
• Bomb:  The Race to Build - and Steal - the World's Most Dangerous Weapon by Steve Sheinkin
• Three Times Lucky by Sheila Turnage

My Thoughts

This year the Youth Media Awards has yielded a varied crop of winners, some of which I expected and some of which were complete surprises.   The Caldecott, with its unusually large pool of recipients, was especially filled with surprises.  I didn't expect either This Is Not My Hat or Creepy Carrots to make the cut, though both books are full of humor and real appeal for all sorts of audiences.  I had expected that John Klassen would win the Caldecott Medal this year, but not for the book that got the big prize.  Still, it pleases me to see Extra Yarn on the list of honor books.  And how cool is it that Klassen came away with two Caldecott awards for two different books this year?  This has only happened once before in the history of the award, when Leonard Weisgard won both a Caldecott Medal and Honor in 1947.

I'd read so many good, worthy children's novels this year that it was very difficult to predict which ones would come away with the Newbery.  There are a couple of titles that I was sad to see neglected - The Unfortunate Son and The Lions of Little Rock come to mind - but generally the recipients seem to be worthy.  I was somewhat surprised to see Three Times Lucky come away with a Newbery Honor.  Personally, I just wasn't terribly enchanted by this book and might have preferred to see another "plucky girl" story (Summer of the Gypsy Moths) come away with an award instead.  But that's just me.

Messy Mondays - Jackson Pollock

We have a new program starting up at the library called Messy Mondays.  Twice per month - on the second and fourth Mondays of the month - we will set up some art supplies and let the kids go to town with creative, mostly open-ended projects.  Our goal is not to make identical crafts, but rather to encourage creativity.  We will also use this time to break out some messier media that parents might be wary of trying out at home or might not have access to - fingerpaints, clay, stamps, etc. 

Credit for this program belongs largely to Mrs. Z, who we are lucky enough to be able to hire to run this program for us.  She plans all of the art projects and runs the program, while library staff gets the supplies, handles sign-in and attendance, publicizes the event, and creates a simple handout for parents to take home.  We also owe lots of thanks to our Friends of the Library group, who sponsors the program and pays for all of our art supplies.

We started the program up this month and have had two sessions.  So far, so good!  Today we celebrated Jackson Pollock's birthday by doing spatter painting in his honor.  Here are the supplies that we used:

We watered down some paint (you don't need much water - just a tiny bit to make the paint flow easily) and then gave the kids two options for splattering.  The kids could get paint on a brush and then tap the brush on a ruler, which would create lots of little splatters.  We also had some squeeze bottles with paint inside that could be gently squeezed, dripped, or even shaken above the paper.

We set the paintings aside to dry and encouraged families to look at books while the dried.  When they returned for their pictures, we matted the pictures on larger black paper to make a "frame."

The picture shown below is a sample created by Mrs. Z:

For anyone who wants to paint like Jackson Pollock but doesn't want to deal with the mess, there's also a great website where you can simulate the process online.  There is also an app available to download from this website for your I-Pad.



Elephant Storytime

This week's storytime was all about elephants!  Did you know that elephants are the largest animal that lives on land?  And that they can use their large ears to fan themselves on hot days?

Here are some of the elephant stories we read:

Peanut by Linas Alsenas
Mildred is very lonely.  But one day she finds a stray puppy.  But is it really a puppy?  Peanut doesn't like to eat dog food, and he doesn't roll over or play fetch.  But he is great at watering Mildred's plants and is an excellent couchwarmer...

When the Elephant Walks by Keiko Kasza
When the elephant walks, he scares the bear.  When the bear runs away, he scares the crocodile.  When the crocodile swims for his life, he scares the wild hog.  The story continues in this fashion until a mouse appears.  Who could possibly be afraid of a mouse?

Elmer by David McKee
All of the elephants in the jungle are gray except for Elmer, who is a patchwork of different colors.  But one day Elmer decides that he is tired of being different and paints himself to look just like the other elephants. 

What to Do if an Elephant Stands on Your Foot by Michelle Robinson, illustrated by Peter H. Reynolds
The story's narrator gives advice on how to avoid encounters with various jungle animals.  But when these instructions aren't heeded encounters with other animals are the result.  This story has a linear progression with lots of different animals just like When the Elephant Walks and is an absolute hoot, but is just a little wordier.  Use the former with more restless groups or if you simply have less time.  If you have time, feel free to use both!



We also did two action rhymes/fingerplays.  I don't remember exactly where I learned this first rhyme, but it was a hit with the kids who were ready to stand up and move a little bit:

An Elephant Goes

An elephant goes

Like this and that.
      (stomp)
He’s terribly big
      (reach high)
And he’s terribly fat.
      (reach wide)
He has no fingers,
      (wiggle fingers)
He has no toes,
      (point to toes)
But goodness gracious
What a nose!
      (wave arm like an elephant's trunk) 

This next fingerplay can be done sitting down, but will still likely get a very enthusiastic response.  It was a hit with my storytime group, anyway!  I found this rhyme on Storytime Katie's blog.  Her version of Elephant Storytime has a lot of fun ideas if you 're looking for more elephant activities.

Up a Hill

Here comes a turtle up a hill,

Creepy, creepy, creepy, creepy.
      (crawl fingers up arm)
Here comes a rabbit up a hill,
Boing, boing, boing, boing.
      (bounce fingers up arm)
Here comes a snake up a hill,
Slither, slither, slither, slither.
     (slide fingers up arm)
Here comes an elephant up a hill,
Thud, thud, thud, thud.
     (clap hand up arm)
Here comes an elephant down a hill.
Thud, thud, thud, thud.
     (clap hand down arm)
CRASH!
     (clap hands loudly)

To finish our storytime we made our own patchwork elephants, just like Elmer.  I found a simple outline of an elephant and printed it out on white paper.  The kids were given glue sticks and lots of cut-up tissue paper to glue onto their elephants.  The craft is simple and requires very little prep, but tissue paper crafts always prove popular at my library and the kids got a kick out of picking out just the right colors to include in their patchwork elephants.

Mock Awards 2013

Every year my new library system does a Mock Awards day, where children's librarians from throughout the system gather to discuss the best books of the year.  Using a weighted scale, we then vote for our favorite three books in each category in an attempt to predict the upcoming winners of the Caldecott, Newbery, and Printz Medals.

Here's how our Mock Awards program worked:

Any children's librarian in the system could nominate any books she/he felt was worthy in any category.  In November a small committee of librarians, myself included, looked at the nominations and selected the 37 books that we would consider on the day of the Mock Awards program.  The 37 books broke down as follows:

20 Picture Books
11 Chapter Books
6 Young Adult Books

The books and participating librarians were then divided into five groups, with each group assigned four picture books, two chapter books, and one YA novel.  A third chapter book and a second YA novel were each assigned, one each to two different groups, due to their brevity.  It was most important that each librarian be sure to read the books assigned to his/her group, but we were encouraged to take a look at all books if we could. 

On the day of the Mock Awards program our groups met and, one category at a time, spent 15-20 minutes discussing the books assigned to our group.  We started with the picture books nominated for the Mock Caldecott category.  After discussion we then went around the room.  Each group, generally assigning a spokesperson to do so, would then share what they loved about the books they were assigned.  After hearing about each book, everyone then voted via written ballot for their first, second, and third place picks for the Caldecott award.  We then all moved on to the next award and repeated the process.

When the votes were counted, each first place vote was weighted with four points.  Second place votes received three points, and third place votes received two points.  At the end of the day the votes were tallied and the winners announced.  We named the first place vote-getter the "Mock Medal" winner, and the second and third place finishers as "Mock Honor" winners.  Since the third and fourth place finishers in this year's Caldecott group were separated by only a single point we named a third "Mock Honor" in this category.

All in all, we finished this program in a little under four hours, which included a short break period for lunch.

Here are the winners we selected in each category:

Mock Caldecott:

More by I.C. Springman, illustrated by Brian Lies
A magpie hordes away more and more little objects in his nest.  But when does it become too much?  This book has very little in the way of text - only 44 words in total - and the story is really carried by Brian Lies' lovely illustrations.  There are so many little details to look at that readers can spend a long time getting lost in the pictures.  How could I possibly forget to include this book in my list of Picture Book Picks from 2012?  It's a real winner.

Honor Books:
Oh, No! by Candace Fleming, illustrated by Eric Rohman
Sleep Like a Tiger by Mary Logue, illustrated by Pamela Zagarenski
Extra Yarn by Marc Barnett, illustrated by Jon Klassen


Mock Newbery:

Wonder by R. A. Palacio
This book tells the story of a boy born with a facial deformity.  When he decides to go to school for the first time when he begins the fifth grade, Augie finds that the transition is full of ups and downs.  Despite Augie's struggles, he does make friends and touches the lives of those around him.  Not only is this a great story about a boy with a serious medical condition, but it is also wonderful school story dealing with some of the pitfalls of middle school - bullying, friendship, and fitting in.  This book seems to be everybody's favorite this year, and it easily took the first place spot in our Mock Newbery voting as well.  But will it come home with the big prize in a few weeks?  Only time will tell.

Honor Books:
The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate
The Lions of Little Rock by Kristen Levine



Mock Printz:

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein
When her plane crashes in Nazi-occupied France, Julie is captured by the Gestapo.  Desperate to end her torture, she tells the enemy what they want to know so that she will survive.  But also contained in Julie's tale is the story of Maddie, the pilot who got her into France and who became her friend under these extraordinary circumstances.  This book is a powerful tale of friendship and courage that will appeal to both adults and teens.  Personally, I will be sorely disappointed if Code Name Verity doesn't walk away with the Printz Award this year as we predicted.  Awesome writing, fascinating historical setting, and strong female characters make this an easy book to love. 

Honor Books:

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz