Over the weekend, the winners of the 2016 MHL Awards were announced at an event at the Red Balloon Bookshop in St. Paul. Here they are: Division I Division II The 2016-2017 nominees have been announced as well. Go check them out at the Maud Hart Lovelace website and comment with which one you are most excited to read!
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Over the past few days the 6th, 7th, and 8th graders have been talking books. Several of them shared brief book recommendations with their classes and everyone heard booktalks about the Maud Hart Lovelace Division II nominees for 2015-2016. They then spent some time exploring and searching the authors' websites to learn more about them and their books. Take a look at the gallery below to see them in action. Remember to click on the images to see them full size.
This past week, students in Grades 1 & 2 had the opportunity to vote for the Star of the North Book Award while those in Grades 3-8 voted for the Maud Hart Lovelace Award (which is broken into Division 1 for 3rd-5th graders and Division II for 6th-8th graders). To be eligible to vote for the Star of the North, students had to have read at least 8 of the 10 picture book nominees. For Maud Hart Lovelace voting, students had to have read at least 3 of the 12 nominated books. I was pleased to see that so many of our NDA students met these requirements and were able to vote. Some felt strongly about their choice while others struggled to pick their favorite, but the votes are all counted and it's time to announce the school-wide winners . . .
In first place for the Star of the North Picture Book Award we have Moo!, written by Minnesota's own David LaRochelle. Belly Up took the top honors for the MHL Division I category and Cinder got the most votes for Division II. At the end of the month we'll find out which books from each category earned the statewide award and we'll get to see the nominees for the 2015-2016 school year. Stay tuned! The winners were just announced today! For Division I (Grades 3-5), Because of Mr. Terupt won first place, Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper took second place, and The Trouble With Chickens came in third.
Out of My Mind was also a winner in Division II (Grades 6-8) - it took first place in this division. Second place went to Between Shades of Gray and third place to The Running Dream. If you haven't read these wonderful books, stop by the library to pick one up! It will still be a while before the state-wide student votes are counted and the winners of the Maud Hart Lovelace award are announced, but I just tallied the votes from the NDA students and can announce the winners for our school today. Drumroll please . . . The winner for Division I (grades 3-5) was . . . Quarterback Season, by Fred Bowen. And the winner for Division II (grades 6-8) was . . . a three-way tie between The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary Pearson, Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys, and The Emerald Atlas by John Stephens. For a little refresher course on these books, refer back to my posts on November 22nd and December 16th. Stay tuned for the announcement on April 25th of the state-wide winners. And remember, even though the opportunity to vote has passed, it is not too late to enjoy one or more of these great titles! The Maud Hart Lovelace award is Minnesota's student choice book award, sponsored by MYRA (Minnesota Youth Reading Awards). Each year, there are 12 books nominated for Division I (Grades 3-5) and 12 books nominated for Division II (Grades 6-8). At the end of March, NDA students who have read at least three nominees in a division may vote on their favorite. Our school's votes will then be submitted and counted amongst the votes of students throughout the state. This week I presented five of the twelve Division I titles to the third, fourth, and fifth graders and many students were interested in checking them out. Any of these five nominees (listed below) would make a great gift this Christmas! Josephine-Kathryn, the main character of Stephanie Barden’s book Cinderella Smith, is having problems. Lots of problems. For starters, she loses shoes all the time. Not both shoes in the pair, just one. That’s how she got the nickname Cinderella. And that’s another problem. Her new fourth grade teacher, the first male teacher she has ever had, laughs at her name. Then there’s the fact that her former best friend has started ignoring her. To top it all off, she has lost one of her ruby red tap shoes that she is supposed to wear in the big fall recital. Read this book to find out how Cinderella Smith deals with these and other problems! Mike Stellar, the main character of K.A. Holt’s book, Mike Stellar: Nerves of Steel, is also having lots of problems, including teacher trouble. As you might have guessed by the cover, this story takes place in the future. 2174 to be exact. The story takes off with a surprise announcement from Mike’s parents: The family is moving to Mars! But they are moving quite suddenly, and Mike begins to suspect that his parents might be involved in something suspicious. Add to this an annoying girl in his spaceship class, a missing sister, and gross food and you get this fun and action-packed science fiction book! Little Flory from The Night Fairy by Laura Amy Schlitz has an entirely different set of troubles - she has lost her wings due to an encounter with a bat. This means she is stuck on the ground and she ends up becoming a Day Fairy. Little Flory is not at all pleased with her new situation and she ends up venting her unhappiness by being rude and demanding to other woodland creatures. Only Skuggle the Squirrel will put up with her demands because she helps him find food (and he LOVES to eat!). He, in turn, becomes her new mode of transportation. Can Little Flory ever be happy again? Can she learn how to be a friend? Moving from fairies to football players, we have Matt, the star of Fred Bowen’s book Quarterback Season. Matt is entering 8th grade and is excited to be the starting quarterback on his school’s football team. Then a new student, Devro, shows up and proves to be an impressive quarterback as well. To make matters worse, Devro is a grade younger that Matt. Will Matt’s dreams of being quarterback crumble? To find out if he gets the starting position, and what his English class journal entries have to do with it all, you'll have to read Quarterback Season. If you are looking for a laugh, think about reading The Trouble With Chickens, by Doreen Cronin. This is the first book in a new series written by the author of Click Clack Moo and Diary of a Worm (and many others). In this book we have JJ Tully, a dog who has retired to a farm after a career as a search and rescue dog. Soon after he arrives at the farm, Millicent the Chicken and and two of her chicks start insisting that he help find the other chicks in the family, who have gone missing. Motivated by the promise of a cheeseburger, JJ decides to help track down Poppy and Sweetie. Can he solve the mystery and find the missing chicks? |
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