Today, I woke up with utter jubilation. As I told a colleague, the ALA YMA announcements are one of my favorite days of the year. I love the idea that all of the working committees report out their hard work and deliberation. Having served on a book award committee in the past, I know that it takes a significant amount of time and care to serve on these committees, so I am always appreciative of the honorees and winners, regardless of my own personal thoughts of who I hoped would win. I also love that the award lists give me such passion to read. I am itching to end this blog post to get reading!
I’d prepared my students. We were going to watch the awards during class. They were also excited. I ferried my children to school and noticed that I had several emails about award winners. I thought, “Uh oh! Folks are releasing the details early!” I messaged Kellee, and she very kindly informed me that I had calculated my time zones two hours in the wrong direction. The awards were released at 6am MST rather than 10am MST. I think that was my first major time zone goof-up in the three years that I’ve lived in Colorado. Alas!
I told my students that we were going to watch the video and PRETEND we were watching live. We did work while the awards played in the background. As usual, I gasped at some of the winners and honorees and also nodded along at titles I’d hoped and expected to win other awards. Ah! It is just so exciting!
Our class talked about the ways in which teachers can generate Mock Newbery/Mock Printz/Mock Caldecott/Mock Sibert/Mock Schneider/Mock ____ committees among their students. Discussions like these always make me miss the classroom a bit. I long to run a Mock committee among students again! All in all, the books and awards bring me such joy. I nabbed the audio of one of the books that I didn’t read, I brought home a few books from my office home to read, and I reserved a few more from the library. Pure bliss.
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