By now every librarian in Texas has heard that the winner for the 2012-2013 Bluebonnet Award is Postcards From Camp by Simms Taback. (insert cheers here). I was quite honestly surprised that this book won because the majority of kids at my school and in my district voted for Zita the Spacegirl. But I am glad that Postcards won cause it's fun and interactive and quirky and I like that. Anyways, it doesn't matter what I think because the beauty of the Texas Bluebonnet Award is that students get to vote and choose the winner.
So, kudos to Taback (who died about a year ago :( ), librarians everywhere for encouraging a love of reading, and the one student at my school that voted for Postcards From Camp!
Each year we have a voting party and I'm always looking for some new ideas to stress out over and try. In years past we have tried playing pictionary in small groups with the book covers but that didn't go over so well as I have a limited time and my students aren't very Pictionary savy. I have also done book cover bingo, but that gets old after a few years. So this year I kept it simple. I printed up the book covers and cut them into puzzles. When they came in, there was a puzzle at each table for them to work on while they waited to get some ice cream and vote. Then I had a backdrop with bluebonnets on it and some of the book covers and they got to take their picture with the book they voted for "in the bluebonnets". And that was it. Boom! 30 minutes. Done. Obviously very low stress. Another librarian friend of mine had a hotdog party and did a whole window display that said, "Hot Diggity Dog, you are coming to the Bluebonnet Party!" or something along those lines. I thought that was pretty genius. I could've done some other kind of theme to go along with one of the books. So, I'm going to keep that in mind for next year. We could do a whole Macy's Parade balloon theme or something. (Can you tell I only know about one of the books for next year's list?) Anyone else have ideas that worked well for you?
No comments:
Post a Comment