Goals of the State Awards Programs
The goals that most of the awards programs share are to:
- encourage children to read, particularly fiction
- promote the use of libraries and media centers
- honor children's authors and books
- increase community support for libraries and reading
- acquaint students with recently published, high quality children's literature.
Most state contests have several different judging categories. Often, these categories are picture books, chapter books, and middle school/YA books. Sometimes the categories are divided by grade level: K-1, Grades 2 and 3, Grades 4-6. In many, but not all cases, the books judged must be fiction and have been written in the last three to five years, and the author must reside in the United States. This probably accounts for the fact that only in Wisconsin, Washington, and New Hampshire was Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone an award winner.
Nominations and Selection
In every case, children throughout the state participate, through their schools or libraries, in the selection process. For this reason, state awards programs are often referred to as "children's choice" programs. Most awards programs have a committee that oversees the nominations and establishes the reading list for each contest category. In some cases, all the children in participating schools will nominate their favorite books. The top five books nominated from each school are then submitted to the committee, which confirms that the books meet the awards criteria. In other cases, the final reading list is a combination of children's favorites and books nominated by librarians. In a few cases, the nominations are all made by librarians but they are based on both a book's popularity and its quality. In any case, the top books nominated are put into the contest categories and reading lists of nominated books are distributed.
Generally, children are not qualified to vote unless they have read or listened to a predetermined number of nominated books. Often, there are 10 to 20 books nominated in a category. For example, in Arizona, a student must read or listen to five of the nominated books (three if in the middle school category) before being eligible to vote. Ballots must be cast by a certain date, and the book receiving the most votes in each category is the winner. In some states, the books that come in second, third, or fourth (or more) are designated as honor books for each category.
As I was researching state children's books awards, I tried to keep an eye out for books that appeared on more than one state's list of winners. While I didn't find any book that swept the state awards from coast to coast, I did find that there are usually some multiple winners in the picture book, intermediate, and middle school categories. I found a great many links to individual state awards; you will find them in my State Awards directory.
