Mock Caldecotts - The Why and How

This week my third graders participated in a Mock Caldecott.  It was a whirlwind of reading, rereading and analyzing 15 picture books in 1 week.  Crazy, I know.  For some reason I thought the ALA Youth Media Awards were later in January, but over my winter vacation I checked my calendar and noticed the Caldecott Medal would be announced on Monday, January 11th! Yikes! That gave me one week to put the mock together. But, it ended up being a great way to jump start our new year.

If you haven't ever participated in a Mock Caldecott or Newbery, I highly recommend you do so.  I think this year marks the 4th or 5th year I have organized a Mock Caldecott and I'm always happy with the outcome.  Picture books are a wonderful thing and I read 1-2 each day to my class.  Read aloud time is probably their favorite time of the day.  But giving students extra time to reread and carefully look at and discuss the books is valuable teaching and learning time.  I'm always amazed at what they notice and discuss.

Fortunately, I had already read most of the books on my list of titles I wanted included in our mock this year.  The few that I hadn't read aloud yet I was sure to read on Monday and Tuesday.  I think it's important to just read and enjoy the book as a "reader" first.  Later we can reread as a "Mock Caldecott Committee member".  I provide a list of our titles which includes author, illustrator and art media used.  You can click here to see the list I gave my students this year.

It's always fun to get other students or teachers involved with your mock.  One year I was able to convince my 6 second grade colleagues to participate in a month long Mock Caldecott.  It was lots of fun and lots of work organizing the books and voting, but well worth it.  This year I met Kathleen Sokolowski at nErDcampLI and after mentioning I would be doing a Mock Caldecott, asked if she would like to participate with us.  Kudos to Kathleen for participating and skyping with us after my last minute tweet the Sunday before our week of mocking! On Thursday we skyped and shared/discussed our favorites for the medal.  Lots of fun.

Finally, there is the voting part.  Before we do the voting I give my students plenty of time to work in small groups with the books each day.  I give them a list of the criteria from ALA, but put it in third grade friendly terms.  It takes a few days for students to start moving away from "this is my favorite book" or "I like this page" and start focusing on the criteria, but they eventually do.  I usually have a chart with the terms I want them to focus on - noticing how the illustrations tell the story or make the story better becomes important to them.  We talk about how the illustrations show mood or character emotions. Students like to compare illustrations in different books.  They like that Kadir Nelson's and Matt Tavare's illustrations are so realistic. (but they do note that the animals in If you Plant a Seed are NOT doing realistic things!) They notice that Christian Robinson's illustrations in Leo: A Ghost Story use limited colors.  They like that and wonder why Christian decided to do that and discuss possible reasons.  They notice a similar thing in the artwork of Erin Stead's  Lenny & Lucy.  They decide that Erin must of wanted us to notice certain things on the page and that's why she gave them color.  They pointed out over and over how each illustrator was able to convey emotion in characters whether realistic or cartoon-like.  By Thursday I started noticing favorites when students kept going back to certain books.  They would pull a group of students over to them and start pointing out the qualities they loved in the illustrations.  Many students loved the magical or fantastical elements of Drum Dream Girl and The Whisper.  On Friday, before we voted students got up and gave their last pitch at convincing their classmates that their book should be selected for our Mock Caldecott Medal.  Then I gave each student a ballot and had them vote for their top three choices.  You can click here to see our ballot.  The book that gets the most votes wins our Mock Caldecott and any close seconds get our Mock Caldecott Honor. You can see who won our Mock Caldecott by going to our class blog.

This year I also started a Twitter account for my class.  We are @Grade3Warriors.  During the week we tweeted about our Mock Caldecott thoughts.  When authors favorite, retweet or tweet back to us it is thrilling for my students. Authors have become real celebrities to my students.  They are so disappointed when an author or illustrator doesn't have a twitter account!

On Monday we will watch the ALA Youth Media Awards live in our classroom.  The awards begin at 8am EST and fortunately my students begin arriving around 8:10am EST.  This year we have also invited our new full time library media specialist, Ms. Yildirim, to watch with us. (Thank you School Board for working to restore full time librarians.) My students are so excited for Monday morning.  They will be thrilled if a book that they have read wins of course, but I also know that if a title is announced that they are not familiar with I will hear voices calling out, "Can you get that book?"

Picture Book 10 for 10 Event - #pb10for10

It's time for the annual Picture Book 10 for 10 Event hosted by Cathy Mere and Mandy Robek.  Each August 10th picture book lovers get together and share their top 10 picture books.  This year you can connect with everyone through The Picture Book 10 For 10 Google Community! This is my 4th year participating.  In fact, the first time I didn't even have a blog yet!

The Bee Tree
I love most all of Patricia Polacco's books!  She writes from her own family experiences and they always pack an emotional punch.  I start with this book and nearly every year I cry or get choked up.  A great story to share the love of reading.

Each Kindness
I won't be surprised if this book is on a lot of lists this year.  A great story to read any time of year, but I like to read it during the first month of school.  A very realistic story with a very realistic ending.

Short Cut
I use this book every single year as a mentor text in writing workshop.  I've used in grades 1-3.  Enough said.

The Incredible Book Eating Boy
Fun, silly and imaginative book.  I read it on the first day of school.  Then later in the week I use it as a discussion starter about the books we love.  We turn it into an art activity.  Yes, I still think it's important to do some arts and crafts in the classroom sometimes! You can learn a lot about students while they cut and paste and talk.

Oliver Button is a Sissy
Oliver likes to draw and pretend.  He doesn't enjoy sports, but wants to tap dance.  Another book relating to bullying, acceptance and being yourself.

Amazing Grace
I'm always surprised that my second or third graders have not read this book before! It's a classic as far as I'm concerned.  Grace wants to play Peter Pan in the school play, but children think she can't because she is a girl.

Jacob's Dress
I found this book sometime last summer and knew I would be adding it to my read alouds.  The story of how Jacob convinces his parents to let him wear a dress.  It's so hard to find books that deal with LGBT issues for our younger readers.  We all have students that don't fit the norm in our schools and classrooms.  It's so important that we find books that represent students that are a bit different.

Me...Jane
A terrific picture book biography about a young Jane Goodall.  My students always enjoy this book.  It is generally the first biography I read to my class.  Not only does it describe Jane as a young child it connects to the ideas of following your dreams and persevering.

The Most Magnificent Thing
Another great book to read early in the school year!  Read and watch as this little girl struggles to create the most magnificent thing.  She has to stop and start over many times to get it just right.  I use this book to introduce the concept of persevering to my students and we will use it over and over throughout the year.

Wolfie the Bunny

Just because it's funny and I know my students will giggle.  It's very important to read lots of humorous books, especially in the beginning of the year.  Great for building a community of readers. Just because it's funny doesn't mean it won't have a message and create some conversation. 

Happy Reading! And don't spend too much on all those new books.

Mock Caldecott 2014

Once again I have organized a Mock Caldecott for the second grade classes to participate in at my school.  Last year was the first time and I learned a lot, so I have made some changes that I hope will help out with the voting.  First, I set up the reading and voting schedule so that 2 books will be read and discussed together.  By comparing 2 books at a time, I hope to prevent students giving every book a top score!  I also changed the scoring system.  Each book will be scored from 1 - 3, on 3 separate questions.  Last year the scores were from 1-5 and we scored the story and illustrations.  You will notice 2 of the questions are regarding the illustrations.  Finally, this year every students will score every book.  Last year each class scored each book.  This made it very difficult to come up with a score, since classmates couldn't agree!





Thanks so much to all the book bloggers and twitter folks who inspire me each and every day.  In particular, Travis Jonker, author of 100 Scope Notes and Mr. Schu at Watch. Connect. Read who shared the idea of a Mock Caldecott.


Selecting the 20 books was so very difficult.  It was important to me to include a variety of different styles of illustrations and also include books that I thought second graders would enjoy.  So, here's our Mock Caldecott Nominees!

·      Niño Wrestles The World by Yuyi Morales

·      Odd Duck by Cecil Castellucci and illustrated by Sara Varon

·      Building Our House by Jonathan Bean

·      Locomotive by Brian Floca

·      Frog Song by Brenda Guiberson and illustrated by Gennady Spirin

·  The Tree Lady by H. Joseph Hopkins and illustrated by Jill McElmurry

·      The Story of Fish and Snail by Deborah Freedman

Hello, My Name is Ruby By Philip C. Stead

·      Mr. Tiger Goes Wild by Peter Brown

·      The Beginner’s Guide to Running Away From Home by Jennifer LaRue Huget and illustrated by Chris Sickels

·      A Splash of Red: The Life & Art of Horace Pippin by Jen Bryant and illustrated by Melissa Bryant

·      On A Beam of Light, a Story of Albert Einstein  by Jennifer Berne illustrated by Vladimir Radunsky

·      Flora and the Flamingo  by Molly Idle

Bluebird by Bob Staake

·      The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt and illustrated by Oliver Jeffers

·      Little Red Writing by Joan Holub and illustrated Melissa Sweet

·      Unicorn Thinks He’s Pretty Great  by Bob Shea

·      The Dark by Lemony Snicket and illustrated by Jon Klassen

 

Journey by Aaron Becker

·      Miss Maple’s Seeds by Eliza Wheeler