For the past fifteen years The Foote School has participated in the selection process for the prestigious Irma Black Award, given by the Bank Street School in New York City.  Here, we just refer to this award as the Bank Street Book Award. This children’s book award is particularly meaningful, as it is selected exclusively by children.  This year the four finalists were: I Want My Hat Back, written and illustrated by Jon Klassen, You Will Be My Friend, written and illustrated by Peter Brown, What Animals Really Like, written and illustrated by Fiona Robinson, and All the Way to America, written and illustrated by Dan Yaccarino. After carefully reading and discussing the four Bank Street book finalists, every MAG student and 3rd grader had the chance to cast a vote for the book they liked best.

And finally the votes are in!  Drum roll please…….The winner of the 2012 Irma Black award is What Animals Really Like.  Fiona Robinson’s funny and engaging books turns everyone’s expectations on end. Do cows really just like to moo? Think again.  Humor with a message mixed in really works to create a winner in What Animals Really Like. Now we know what Foote students really like!

Since 1973 Bank Street College of Education has been presenting the Irma Simonton Black and James H. Black Award for Excellence in Children’s Literature.  Here at Foote School this award is known simply as the Bank Street Award. It is an exciting time in the library for the MAG and 3rd grade classes as we read the four Bank Street Award finalists.

This award is given to an outstanding book for young children in which text and illustrations are inseparable, each enhancing and enlarging on the other to produce a singular whole.   The Bank Street Award is unique in that only children are allowed to vote for the winning selection. The 2010 finalists are: How Rocket Learned to Read by Tad Williams, Children Make Terrible Pets by Peter Brown, A Pig Parade is a Terrible Idea written by Michael Ian Black and illustrated by Kevin Hawkes and Dust Devil written by Anne Isaacs and Illustrated by Paul Zelinsky.

Stories are everywhere. Not just in books or in the newspapers. If you look around you will find that stories may be hidden in objects in your home, in the building you pass on the street, in the bridges you drive across. This is the lesson (one of many) in Dave the Potter: Artist, Poet, Slave,  the magnificent book we are reading with the 3rd graders.  Laban Carrick Hill explains in the author’s note that he became curious about Dave after seeing his pottery on an episode of Antiques Roadshow.  His flowing text tells the incredible story of a slave who learned to read and write and was courageous enough to inscribe his pottery with his name and occasionally, short verses.

The illustrations, which won illustrator Bryan Collier a 2010 Caldecott Honor award, are a combination of collage and watercolor. The many layers, pieced together, reflect the complex life that Dave lived nearly two hundred years ago.

Newbery Medal

Moon Over Manifest – Clare Vanderpool

Set in 1936, this memorable coming-of-age story follows 12-year-old Abilene Tucker’s unusual summer in her father’s hometown of Manifest, Kansas, while he’s away on a railroad job. Having had an itinerant upbringing, Abilene is eager to connect to her father’s childhood, a goal that proves difficult. With new friends Lettie and Ruthanne, Abilene pieces together the past, coming to understand, as Miss Sadie says, that “maybe what you’re looking for is not so much the mark your daddy made on this town, but the mark the town made on your daddy.”

I especially like these quotes for obvious reasons:

“If there is such a thing as a universal [Abilene's term for things she finds to be true no matter where she goes] …it’s that there is power in a story.”

Abilene is supposed to write a story over the summer for Sister Redempta, the school teacher. Sister suggests she start by looking up the word manifest in the dictionary, remembering it is a verb as well as a noun. Then she says, “And remember, Abilene Tucker: to write a good story, one must watch and listen.”

Her friend Lettie has different advice for her:

“Telling a story ain’t hard,” Lettie had said. “All you need is a beginning, middle, and end.”

But that was the problem. I was all middle. I’d always been between the last place and the next.

Newbery Honors

Dark Emperor and Other Poems of the Night – Joyce Sidman

Heart of a Samurai – Margi Preus

One Crazy Summer – Rita Williams-Garcia

Turtle in Paradise – Jennifer Holm

Caldecott Medal

A Sick Day for Amos McGee – written by Philip Christian Stead and illustrated by Erin Stead

With quiet affection, this husband-and-wife team tells the story of a zookeeper whose devotion is repaid when he falls ill. On most days, the angular, elderly Amos rides the bus to the zoo, plays chess with the elephant (“who thought and thought before making a move”), sits quietly with the penguin, and spends time with his other animal friends. But when Amos catches a cold, the animals ride the bus to pay him a visit, each, in a charming turnabout, doing for Amos whatever he usually does for them.

Caldecott Honors

Interrupting Chicken – David Ezra Stein

Dave the Potter: Artist, Poet, Slave – written by Laban Carrick Hill with illustrations by Bryan Collier

Theodor Seuss Geisel Award (for early readers)

Bink and Gollie -– written by Kate DiCamillo and Alison McGhee with illustrations by Tony Fucile

Bink and Gollie stretch the vocabulary beyond the limits of your usual beginning reader (think Cat in the Hat, Frog and Toad, George and Martha). But the challenging words, couched in humor, are ones children will want to collect and try on for size in similar contexts. We may raise a generation of readers who say, “With whom am I speaking?” or “Don’t take my bike, I implore you.” Just when you thought text messages were butchering the language, here come Bink and Gollie to make the case for eloquence and cleverness!

Geisel Honors

Ling & Ting: Not Exactly the Same – Grace Lin

We Are in a Book –  Mo Willems

Coretta Scott King Awards

One Crazy Summer -  Rita Williams-Garcia

Delphine is a steady soul, old for her age at eleven-going-on-twelve. Her mother, Cecile, abandoned the family years ago, leaving Delphine with the weight of caring for her two younger sisters. After all this time, Delphine and her sisters are sent to California to spend the summer of 1968 with a mother they can barely remember and who still appears to have no interest in her children. Expecting a summer of Disneyland and movie stars, the girls get a rude awakening when they see Cecile. On their very first morning there, Cecile gives the girls directions to a community center run by the Black Panthers and makes it clear she doesn’t expect to see them until dinner.

Zora and Me -  Victoria Bond and T.R. Simon

Robert F. Sibert Medal for most distinguished informational book

Kakapo Rescue: Saving the World’s Strangest Parrot – written by Sy Montgomery with photos by Nic Bishop

What’s a kakapo? It is a heavy, flightless parrot with moss-green feathers and a smell like that of honey that is on the brink of extinction. Author Montgomery and photographer Bishop have a ten-day pass to visit Codfish Island—just south of New Zealand—to report on the devoted rangers, technical support officers, and volunteers of the National Kakapo Recovery Team, who are attempting to save these unique birds that have dwindled down to a population of only eighty-seven.

Robert F. Sibert Honors

Ballet for Martha: Making Appalachian Spring – written by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan and illustrated by Brian Floca

Lafayette and the American Revolution – Russell Freedman

AND THE WINNER IS:   ROBOT ZOT

Since 1973 Bank Street College of Education has been presenting the Irma Simonton Black and James H. Black Award for Excellence in Children’s Literature.  Here at Foote School this award is known simply as the Bank Street Award. What makes this award so special is that children, including Foote School students, are the final judges of the winning book.

Each year four books are selected by the students at the Bank Street School for Children as finalists for the award.   These four books are sent to selected area schools where they are all read aloud.  After all our MAG and 3rd grade classes have listened to and looked at the books, it is time for the kids to vote.   This is an exciting time in the library.  All the students love the books and the great sense of responsibility that comes along with casting a ballot for this prestigious children’s book award.  This year the four finalists are Billy Twitters and his Blue Whale Problem, Robot Zot, A Penguin Story and Sergio Saves the Game!