and the Second Graders' Mock Caldecott Winner is...

After discussions... 

and evaluations...

the second graders cast their ballots.

Here's a peak at the scene:

The students needed to explain their voting in step 2:

It was time to tabulate the results:

become this chart:

OUR

WINNER is...

Sam & Dave Dig a Hole

With honors to:

Beekle

Draw

You can read more of the students comments about each book here:

On choosing a Mock Caldecott List

It's hard choosing a Mock Caldecott list. It's even harder if you are trying to do two things: expose students to a diverse group of illustrators and illustration styles and choose books that might have a chance of being recognized by one of the ALA Youth Media Awards.

In early November, my LibraryPals partner, Laura Given, and I created a loooong list of titles. Over a three week period we adjusted this list, relying on each other's reactions to a book if we hadn't had a chance to read it ourselves. We needed to come up with a final list of six titles because we knew we had four weeks to run the unit. Our plan was to pair two books each week and then vote on the fourth week. 

Here's what we wanted on our list:

**books illustrated by women

**books illustrated by people of color

**books representing the pluralistic society in which we live

**books illustrated with different media

**books that are fiction and nonfiction

We ended up with a good balance: Mock Caldecott 2015 List (Beekle, Draw, Sam & Dave, Right Word, Josephine**, and Viva Frida).  Not to read too much into it, but I was pleased to see that our six books were on yesterday's Horn Book's Calling Caldecott second ballot!

We ended up with a good balance...or so I thought.

My third graders registered their first round votes last Tuesday. 

My second graders voted yesterday. Their votes mirrored the third graders, but with more definitive results:

Not a woman was among the top three books. There was a flaw in our choices: all the women illustrated nonfiction books. We should have ensured that we had male and female illustrators of both the fiction and nonfiction.  

I also wonder if next year, we should choose only fiction books...OR...since, the three women illustrators, whose nonfiction books are fabulous, will likely win another award. Maybe next year, we should run a Sibert and a Caldecott? 

*pondering pondering pondering*

**There was a book change that needed to happen - Josephine was just too long for this process and would have required too much conversation, which we thought would take away from the focus on illustrations. It's a fabulous book, but not good for this unit.  We replaced it with Scraps by Lois Ehlert - wanting a nonfiction book and a book illustrated by a woman.

**We decided to not include titles by illustrators that we explored during the Mock Caldecott unit last year in an attempt to give the students a broader experience.

Looking forward to updating these ALA Award folders

One week from today, I'll be in a room in Chicago (with many other children's literature fanatics) to hear the announcements of the winners of the ALA Youth Media Awards.

From the ALA site:
"Each year the American Library Association honors books, videos, and other outstanding materials for children and teens. Recognized worldwide for the high quality they represent, the ALA Youth Media Awards, including the prestigious Newbery, Caldecott, Printz, and Coretta Scott King Book Awards, guide parents, educators, librarians, and others in selecting the best materials for youth. Selected by committees composed of librarians and other literature and media experts, the awards encourage original and creative work in the field of children’s and young adult literature and media.  The announcement of the 2015 Youth Media Awards will take place at 8:00 a.m. Central time on Monday, Feb. 2, 2015, during the ALA Midwinter Meeting & Exhibition in Chicago."

"Join us for a live webcast of the press conference or follow I Love Libraries on Twitter and Facebook to be among the first to know the 2015 winners. The official hashtag for the 2015 Youth Media Awards is  #ALAyma." 

I attended this event last year and am beyond excited to be able to repeat the experience. It's special. You can read (and hear) about this experience on this post, Midwinter Night's Dream.

Here are the folders I created and laminated:

Each one had a brief synopsis of the award:

Inside, I put the medal winners and honor books.

The students loved exploring these last year and have had fun revisiting these books since I put up the folders on January 5th. 

What titles will I be typing up in a week?

The first of the Mock Caldecott Book Trailers!

The 5th grade book trailers are here!

Well, at least the first of the batch of book trailers are in. The students spent about four library periods on this project. They worked in groups to: get to know their books; create a storyboard for the book trailer; search for, save and cite images; and, create the book trailers with Animoto. You can find all the documents and directions for this project on my Webpage.  I can't wait to show these to the students in the lower grades!

Mr. Tiger Goes Wild by Peter Brown



The Dark by Lemony Snicket and illustrated by Jon Klassen
 

Sophie's Squash by Pat Zeitlow Miller and illustrated by Anne Wilsdorf 


Matchbox Diary by Paul Fleishman and illustrated by Bagram Ibatoulline




Unicorn Thinks He's Pretty Great by Bob Shea



 
Inside Outside by Lizi Boyd
 



The Boy Who Loved Math by Deborah Heiligman and illustrated by LeUyen Pham



Locomotive by Brian Floca
This is the Rope by Jacqueline Woodson and illustrated by James Ransome


  Flora and the Flamingo by Molly Idle






Here are some of the storyboards:
and the storyboard



and the storyboard:

Mock Caldecott: Grade 4 Evaluation Form

I share this with a significant amount of trepidation.  I was going to create a paper rubric, and then created an electronic rubric, but found that my students needed a little more scaffolding.  Here's the latest iteration.  I am using this with 4th graders. Feel free to use, borrow, etc. If you can think of better language for the grid, please share!

Bluebird, written and illustrated by Bob Staake

Crafting Caldecott Criteria

Each year I wrestle with language that I think will make the Caldecott Medal Criteria more accessible to my elementary students.  This is daunting and I am never sure I get it right.

The 4th and 5th graders explore the language on their own for a bit and then we work to put it in child-friendly language with concrete examples, but I try to skip this step with the 1st and 2nd graders and go right to my own language. 

Here's the official language:

Criteria
"In identifying a “distinguished American picture book for children,” defined as illustration, committee members need to consider:

a.   Excellence of execution in the artistic technique employed;
b.   Excellence of pictorial interpretation of story, theme, or       
      concept;
c.   Appropriateness of style of illustration to the story, theme or 
      concept;
d.   Delineation of plot, theme, characters, setting, mood or 
      information through the pictures;
e.   Excellence of presentation in recognition of a child audience."

[Adopted by the ALSC board, January 1978. Revised, Midwinter 1987. Revised, Annual 2008.]
http://www.ala.org/alsc/awardsgrants/bookmedia/caldecottmedal/caldecottterms/caldecottterms

I love this language, but when asking student to take on the role of a Mock Caldecott Committee they need something they can feel confident in their understanding.

This year, I decided to take the five criteria and translate them into this:

"In identifying a “distinguished American picture book for children,” defined as illustration, committee members need to consider:"

a.   Excellence
b.   Appropriateness
c.   Importance
d.   Appeal

After a week of playing with this language, it feels pretty good. 

What do you think?  

What do you use? 

 Please share! 

**disclaimer**

I apologize if altering the Caldecott Criteria language has offended any readers.

Mice on Ice!

Lucky Me!

For the twelfth year, I worked with a group of women to decorate a tree for the Concord Museum Family Trees Exhibit. (If you click on this link, you will our tree from last year!)

Lucky Me!

I am in awe of the creativity and ingenuity of these women, my friends.  I love these women, but I love even more that we gather together to create something.  After planning out our display, we cut, glue, sew, paint, and talk.  Mice on Ice was a fun and sometimes challenging display, "How can we get these mice to skate on ice?"

Lucky Me!

This year, we were fortunate to create a tree for Mice on Ice by Rebecca Emberley and Ed Emberley, both of whom were able to participate in the author/illustrator visiting day, which was today!  I had never met the Emberley's and let me tell you, they are fun...and impressive, between the two of them they have over 100 books! Here a TeachingBooks.net interview with Ed Emberley about Mice on Ice.

Lucky You!

If you live in the area, 

the exhibit is up through January 1st. 

My Mock Caldecott Lists

Without further ado....The Short List:

1.  Mr. Tiger Goes Wild
Written and illustrated by Peter Brown

Author and Illustrator Peter Brown On His Process from School Library Journal on Vimeo.

Peter Brown's TeachingBooks.net page.
Read my review!

2.  Journey 
Written and illustrated by Aaron Becker

Aaron Becker's TeachingBooks.net page.

3.  Flora and the Flamingo

Written and illustrated by Molly Idle 

Molly Idle's TeachingBooks.net page.

4.  Little Red Writing
Written by Joan Holub and illustrated by Melissa Sweet

Melissa Sweet's TeachingBooks.net page.

Read my review!

5.  Building Our House
Written and illustrated by Jonathan Bean

Jonathan Bean's TeachingBooks.net page.

6. Bluebird
Written and illustrated by Bob Staake

Bob Staake's TeachingBooks.net page.

7. Locomotive

Written and illustrated by Brian Floca

8. The Story of Fish and Snail

Written and illustrated by Deborah Freedman

9. The Dark

Written by Lemony Snicket and illustrated by Jon Klassen

Jon Klassen's TeachingBooks.net page.

10. Inside Outside

Written and illustrated by Lizi Boyd

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~
The long list...the above titles plus
(in no particular order)

A Splash of Red
Brave Girl
Sophie's Squash
The Boy Who Loved Math
Mr. Wuffles
Steam Train, Dream Train
Exclamation Mark
Night Song
Train
Warning: Do Not Open This Book
Hello, My Name is Ruby
Matchbox Diary
The Day the Crayons Quit
The Boy and the Airplane
Daisy Gets Lost
Nelson
Stardines
Mighty Lalouche
Frog Song
Round is a Tortilla
Super Hair-O and the Barber of Doom
Beginners Guide to Running Away from Home
Who Says Women Can't Be Doctors?
Red Hat
This is Not a Good Idea
On a Beam of Light
A Long Way Away
Tortoise and the Hare
This is the Rope
Open this Little Book


What are you waiting for? Get Reading!