Literacy Milestone: Being Aware of Book Awards
September 16, 2015
As my daughter and I have read picture books over the years, I've started each read by telling her the author and title of each book. Sometimes I'll add something about the publisher, where the book came from, or whether I've met the author. Occasionally, I'll point out the Caldecott medal or honor sticker on a book, but I've never made too much of this. [Must get some Cybils stickers to add to my Cybils-winning books.]
You can imagine my surprise when we started reading Click, Clack, Moo: Cows that Type the other morning. My daughter pointed to the Caldecott Honor sticker on the cover and said: "This means that this book is really famous." We then got into a discussion about the silver stickers vs. the gold ones. It went over her had when I said that The Adventures of Beekle has a gold sticker, but that our copy doesn't have the sticker. She did, however, recall the sticker on the cover of Officer Buckle and Gloria, which we had read just a few days before.
I thought it was interesting that she understood that the award-winning books were famous, without necessarily having an idea of whether they would be good or not. If she can grasp that a particular book might be award-winning, but still not necessarily her personal cup of tea, then I think we'll be in good shape.
© 2015 by Jennifer Robinson of Jen Robinson's Book Page. All rights reserved. You can also follow me @JensBookPage or at my Growing Bookworms page on Facebook.