Every year, a group of librarians selects some books for kids to read and vote on. The winners, as chosen by Ontario children, earn one of the Forest of Reading Awards, each aimed at a different age group. What a great way to find books that are totally kid-approved!
This year’s winners are to be announced at the Festival of Trees on May 11th and 12th, so I’ll be posting some reviews of the nominees over the next couple of weeks, but until we know about this year’s winner – here are some of last year’s winners!
(Want to know more? Check out the awards here.)
Blue Spruce Award
Ages 4-7, grades K-2
Boo Hoo Bird
by Jeremy Tankard
Scholastic
ISBN: 978 0 545 06570 2
Bird, who we met in Grumpy Bird, has now hurt himself. Oh, no! Some self-pity is expended, but Bird has good friends and won’t be kept down for long, though.
I find these very funny, in the way that curmudgeons can be. His friends clearly find him worth indulging, too, giving a nice demonstration of what friendship is all about.
The art is great for young kids – bold, simple, cartoonish, and brightly coloured, Tankard manages to capture great characters and expression with relatively little. Being so good for the younger set, this is also available in board book.
Silver Birch Award
ages 7-11, grades 3-6
Zorgamazoo
by Robert Paul Weston
RazorBill
ISBN: 978 1 59514 295 5
I am, I should say first of all, not generally a fan of the whole novel-in-verse oeuvre. It strikes me as pretentious and often doesn’t seem to work super well to me. But this? Well, this is almost more of an extended-length Seuss story than a novel, and the verse has that same catchy lilt that makes reading it a whole lot of fun.
The story opens with Katrina Katrell spotting a strange creature, and her stodgy, nasty guardian threatening her with a lobotomy if she doesn’t stop making stuff up. But once Katrina escapes, she discovers that she is completely correct – and falls into an adventure of the most fantastical sort. Think creatures and captures, spaceships and strange sports, magic gases, and a changing of the world without anyone ever knowing it.
The book makes the point of the value of magic and imagination, and along the way, employs gobs of those things. It really is a wonderful treat, and I fell in headlong within a chapter. Once finished, I handed it over for immediate bedtime reading and started recommending it to everyone. It’s no wonder to me at all that this quirky book was a hands-down winner, because it is completely delightful.
Red Maple Award
ages 11-15, grades 7-8
Word Nerd
by Susin Nielsen
Tundra
ISBN: 978 0 887 76990 0
From my earlier review: Poor, living in a basement apartment with a wildly overprotective single
mom, really, really allergic to peanuts, and dying to fit in as a
perpetual new kid – let’s just say none of this is helping Ambrose avoid
being the loser who gets picked on. He gets picked on enough, in fact,
that his mom eventually lets him take school through correspondence,
even though his being home alone at times worries her silly.
At
the same time, the landlords who live upstairs have their son return
home from prison. Ambrose manages to strike up a sort of partnership
with him despite his mother’s warnings, and in the process, starts to
break some rules in finding a way to get to a Scrabble club, which he
comes to love. Everything comes to a head with this really good kid
running away in order to force his mom to listen to him and see the
truth about him, his new friends, and the fact that he is growing up.
It’s
funny, touching, and features characters that read like real people
with real baggage. I like the characters and how fully developed they
are, how much Ambrose just is who he is. The mother-son relationship
here is great, too – they really care about each other, even when they
are pulling in opposite directions. The resolution they come to feels
realistic, too, as everything is not all perfect, but the process of
working together to find what will work for everyone is set out, and you
know that things will be okay.
Also available as an ebook.
Golden Oak Award
for adult learners (also appropriate for grade 3-12)
One Hen: One Small Loan Made a Big Difference
by Kate Smith Milway
KidsCan Press
ISBN: 978 1 554 53028 1
This wonderful non-fiction book about microloans and the amazing impact they can have is aimed at children, but a wonderful read for all ages because of its more sophisticated subject matter – always a difficult balance to find for adult learners.
This book works at two levels in its text, with a fuller version and a short sidebar version, making it flexible and allowing for easy review when working on comprehension.
Not only is the content and the text structure interesting, but the illustrations are wonderful. Full of warmth and folkish in style, they depict humble people working to make their lives better and families sharing tasks and love. This book has been used by many classrooms to begin initiatives that not only give students a better understanding of global social justice issues, but involve them directly in learning that they can make their own difference in the world. This is powerful stuff, and I plan to buy this book for my kids, who I hope to teach well about the bigger picture.
These all look super-cute, Alice!