Spotlight Friday - Mock Caldecott 10.28.16

Time to get ready for the weekend!

Kick up your feet and find a good place to read.

Sharing #booklove for your classroom or library.

Spotlighting a book or two because these books deserve the spotlight!

Our Mock season has officially begun.  We've had our first Mock Newbery meeting with our 4th grade club and now we're getting ready to kick off Mock Geisel and Mock Caldecott at our school. Here's an update on how our Mock Caldecott is going this year!

As I've been reading picture books this year, I've been adding potential Caldecott books to my list. It's grown quite long, but I was able to create our Mock Caldecott LONG list from it.  Here's what we started with:

• Thunder Boy Jr. by Sherman Alexie, illustrated by Yuyi Morales
• Ada’s Violin by Susan Hood, illustrated by Sally Wern Comport
• When Spring Comes by Kevin Henkes, illustrated by Laura Dronzek
• Be a Friend by Salina Yoon
• Freedom in Congo Square by Carol Boston Weatherford, illustrated by Gregory Christie
• Tell Me a Tattoo Story by Alison McGhee, illustrated by Eliza Wheeler
• The Secret Subway by Shana Corey, illustrated by Red Nose Studio
• Before Morning by Joyce Sidman, illustrated by Beth Krommes
• Henry & Leo by Pamela Zagarenski
• We Found a Hat by Jon Klassen
• The Airport Book by Lisa Brown
• This is Not a Picture Book by Sergio Ruzzier
• They All Saw a Cat by Brendan Wenzel
• Maybe Something Beautiful by F. Isabel Campoy and Thomas Holland, illustrated by Rafael Lopez
• The Knowing Book by Rebecca Kai Dotlich, illustrated by Matthew Cordell
• The Whale by Ethan and Vita Murrow
• Daniel Finds a Poem by Micha Archer
• The Princess and the Warrior by Duncan Tonatiuh
• Shy by Deborah Freedman
• The Night Gardener by The Fan Brothers
• The Uncorker of Ocean Bottles by Michelle Cuevas, illustrated by Erin Stead
• Return by Aaron Becker
• Jazz Day by Roxane Orgill, illustrated by Francis Vallejo
• Twenty Yawns by Jane Smiley, illustrated by Lauren Castillo
• School’s First Day of School by Adam Rex, illustrated by Christian Robinson
• Are We There Yet? by Dan Santat

Fantastic books. I knew it would be hard to cut this list down. My colleague and I started having discussions, but we still had trouble cutting anything down. We decided to try something new this year.

To help us figure out the books we really wanted for the Mock list, we enlisted help from the staff. Our 2nd-4th graders participate in the Mock Caldecott each year, so we asked teachers from those grade levels to help. We set aside one afternoon after school to dig into these books and look at them with the Caldecott criteria in mind. My colleague and I pulled the books from the long list and I made up a Google survey. I asked our teachers to note the art medium the book used (thank goodness that is usually listed on the copyright page!) and evaluate the book on the following criteria:

• excellence of artistic technique
• excellence of pictorial interpretation of story, theme or concept
• appropriateness of style of illustration to the story
• you can visually see the plot, theme, characters, setting, mood or information through the illustrations

We also asked the teachers to add any additional comments about the book.

Based on their responses, we formed our official 2017 Meadowview School Mock Caldecott list. On our list this year:

• Ada’s Violin by Susan Hood, illustrated by Sally Wern Comport
• Be a Friend by Salina Yoon
• The Secret Subway by Shana Corey, illustrated by Red Nose Studio
• Before Morning by Joyce Sidman, illustrated by Beth Krommes
• Henry & Leo by Pamela Zagarenski
• We Found a Hat by Jon Klassen
• The Airport Book by Lisa Brown
• This is Not a Picture Book by Sergio Ruzzier
• They All Saw a Cat by Brendan Wenzel
• Maybe Something Beautiful by F. Isabel Campoy and Thomas Holland, illustrated by Rafael Lopez
• The Whale by Ethan and Vita Murrow
• The Night Gardener by The Fan Brothers
• The Uncorker of Ocean Bottles by Michelle Cuevas, illustrated by Erin Stead
• Return by Aaron Becker
• Jazz Day by Roxane Orgill, illustrated by Francis Vallejo
• Twenty Yawns by Jane Smiley, illustrated by Lauren Castillo

As you can see, it helped us bring down the list a bit, but it's still pretty long! We'll begin the second week of November. Teachers will have until the Friday before the awards to read the books. My colleague and I will create a padlet the teachers can use during the unit giving websites and video links.

I'm looking forward to beginning this year's unit!

Want even more information? Check out our Celebration from last year!

Thinking about holding a Mock Geisel? Check out last week's post!