8.25.2008

Mock Caldecotts 2009: First Elimination Round

This blog post is a little late…

As the children’s materials specialist, I chair the children’s book selection committee (CBSC). Among many duties, one of the perky fun things we get to do is plan the Mock Caldecott Awards in the winter. In July, we started our first round of reviews. Frankly, there weren’t a lot that stood out tremendously, nothing truly special…in our opinions, anyway. As a result, we were incredibly wishy-washy on a lot of the titles. As of now, here are the books definitely in the running:

- Drive by Nathan Clement
- How I Learned Geography by Uri Shulevitz
- A Kitten Tale by Eric Rohmann
- Before John Was a Jazz Giant by Carole Boston Weatherford, illus by Sean Qualls

And here are the books that we labeled, wishy-washily, as “maybes”:

- Building Manhattan by Laura Vila
- I, Matthew Henson: Polar Explorer by Carole Boston Weatherford, illus by Eric Valasquez
- Lady Liberty by Doreen Rappaport, illus by Matt Tavares
- My Friend, the Starfinder by George Ella Lyon, illus by Stephen Gammell
- Planting the Trees of Kenya by Claire Nivola

Lastily – and I’m sure to hear some cries of surprise and, perhaps, outrage on these ones – here are the definite “no” votes. Which means we won’t consider them for our final Mock Caldecott discussion and voting:

- Big Plans by Bob Shea, illus by Lane Smith
- A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever by Marla Frazee
- Fartiste by Kathleen Krull, illus by Boris Kulikov
- Grasshopper’s Song by Nikki Giovanni, illus by Chris Raschka
- Grump Groan Growl by Bell Hooks, illus by Chris Raschka
- House in the Night by Susan Marie Swanson, illus by Beth Krommes
- Imaginary Menagerie by Julie Larios, illus by Julie Paschkis
- Kids Like Us by Carole Lexa Schaefer, illus by Pierr Morgan
- Market Day by Carol Foskett Cordsen, illus by Douglas Jones
- On the Farm by David Elliott, illus by Holly Meade
- Searcher and the Old Tree by David McPhail
- Singing to the Sun by Vivian French, illus by Jackie Morris
- United Tweets of America by Hudson Talbott
- We Are the Ship: the Story of Negro League Baseball by Kadir Nelson
- What to Do About Alice? by Barbara Kerley, illus by Edwin Fotheringham
- Wonder Bear by Tao Nyeu

As I’m sure you can see, there are a lot of stellar books we haven’t looked into yet (Wabi Sabi and Steel Town immediately come to mind). Also, all those books listed above certainly weren't unanimous votes - there were lots of dissenters and advocates for certain books. Our next “elimination round” is coming up in October so I’ll keep you posted!
Stay tuned!

1 comment:

The Ginger Darlings said...

Sorry that you weren't that bothered about Singing to the Sun, but I suppose at the end of the day you can't please everybody. As a cat Max did his best to pose for the tabby cat in the book, despite the fact that She is not very good at painting cats really.
Good to see there is a cat book on your list though.