Each year Waynflete students in kindergarten through third grade happily participate in the Chickadee Award program, a children’s choice picture book award program. The official Chickadee Award website explains, “This award is given annually to one of ten picture books nominated by a committee of teachers, librarians, and early literacy professionals. Each year the books are chosen from those published in the previous year and are selected because they present a solid original story and artwork that supports and extends the text.” The nominees are read aloud in the library throughout the year, with voting (including a voting booth and “I Voted!” stickers) taking place the last week of March.
For older students, there’s the Maine Student Book Award, a program for 4th-8th graders co-sponsored by the Maine Library Association, Maine Association of School Libraries, and Maine Reading Association. Students read independently from a list of approximately 30 nominees. To be eligible to vote, they must have read at least three of the nominees. Voting for MSBA is held in late March.
Both awards were announced last week. Younger students were excited to learn that the favorite Chickadee nominee here was also the overall winner:
The Wolves are Back by Jean Craighead George
For over a century, wolves were persecuted in the United States and nearly became extinct. Gradually reintroduced, they are thriving again in the West, much to the benefit of the ecosystem.
As for the Maine Student Book Award, the winner was a book that many Middle Schoolers have read and enjoyed:
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
In a future North America, where the rulers of Panem maintain control through an annual televised survival competition pitting young people from each of the twelve districts against one another, sixteen-year-old Katniss’s skills are put to the test when she voluntarily takes her younger sister’s place.
Next year’s nominees for both awards will be announced soon. The MSBA nominees make great choices for summer reading, so we’ll be including them here in our summer reading lists. The Chickadee fun will begin again in September. Thank you to all young readers who participated in both programs!
