Both of these awards are useful for following up on the information many of us learned a few weeks ago at the Storytimes for Everyone workshop with Saroj Ghoting.

For those of you looking to incorporate more nonfiction into storytimes and other programs for preschoolers, take a peek at this:

The Correll Book Award for Excellence in Early Childhood Information Text was designed to shed light on the need to produce quality informational texts for children birth to age 8. This year the Award Committee granted awards in 2 categories:  one for birth to 3 and one for 4-8 year old children. The award for the birth to 3 category went to Look! by Ted Lewin and the winner in the 4-8 year old division was Best Foot Forward by Ingo Arndt. Please contact Dr. Susan Bennett-Armistead [Susan.bennett-armistead@maine.edu], Committee Chair, should you have questions about the award or have an interest in nominating titles.  

For those of you who are hoping to run with the ideas in Every Child Ready to Read 2, emphasizing the practices of Talk, Play, Sing, Read, Write, here’s the award for you!

The CLEL Bell Picture Book Award is given by the Colorado Libraries for Early Literacy to five high-quality picture books that provide excellent support of early literacy development in young children.   There is one book that emphasizes each of the five early literacy practices. Here’s the list of winners.  Here’s the short-list.  You can also find a list of 25 books published in the last 25 years (and still in print) that exemplify the selection criteria–5 books for each practice.

Pretty cool to have others do some of the sifting and winnowing for us, isn’t it?