Check these out–encourage kids to participate, or build some programs around these 2 children’s choice awards. If you do, let me know!

The Children’s Choice Book Awards voting will open on Monday, March 14th. The downloadable ballot will be available here to use in your classroom or library. After you’ve tallied the kids’ votes, you can enter them as a group into our online form, or encourage kids to enter their own votes online.

Awards will be given to books for kindergarteners through teens. Winners will be announced during Children’s Book Week (May 2-8, 2011). Visit the Book Week site that week to find out the winners! More resources for teachers and librarians are available on the Book Week site here: http://www.bookweekonline.com/for-teachers

The Bank Street College of Education, in partnership with School Library Journal, is inviting librarians or teachers of first and second graders to read aloud and discuss the four finalists in the Irma Simonton Black & James H. Black Award for Excellence in Children’s Literature and then submit the children’s votes for the best picture book of the year. Public librarians can plan a pop-up program for after school or partner with their local schools for visits… … the key is reading aloud great books, talking about what makes an excellent picture book and gathering the children’s votes.
To participate, register here.
The four finalists are:
How Rocket Learned To Read (Random, 2010) by Tad Hills
Children Make Terrible Pets (Little, Brown, 2010) by Peter Brown
A Pig Parade is a Terrible Idea (S & S, 2010) by Michael Ian Black and illustrated by Kevin Hawkes
Dust Devil (Random, 2010) by Anne Isaacs, illustrated by Paul Zelinsky, a companion to Swamp Angel (Dutton, 1994)