State Winners

The Illinois award winners have been announced. The students, at Prairieview in particular, are quite interested in the results as compared to the results in our schools. I wrote about the local winners a few weeks ago. The state winners are as follows:
Rebecca Caudill Young Readers' Book Award
1st place: All the Lovely Bad Ones
2nd place: Someone Named Eva
3rd place: Elephant Run

Monarch Award
1st place: Scaredy Squirrel
2nd place: Once I Ate a Pie
3rd place: Gingerbread Girl

If you are at all concerned about the huge increase in childhood obesity, how about asking the Easter Bunny for a book and a little less candy?

Spring is here! (We hope.)

The Elizabeth Ide I.M.C. has been redecorated for spring. The topic is baseball. We said goodbye to all our Australia decorations and hung lots of new baseball pictures from the ceiling.

The pictures of books about Australia have been replaced with books about baseball. We have close to a HUNDRED books on the subject, so we can't show them all. Second graders know how to look for them in our catalog. After spring break, we will display baseball books so everyone can easily find them. For now, here is a sample.

A New Award

The prairie grass in Illinois is called Bluestem. And now, so is our new readers' award. Illinois librarians decided to add an award for students in grades three through five. The first time this award will be made is in February of 2011. Prairieview School students will participate. Perhaps we can plant some Bluestem grass to be viewed from the school.We will continue to participate in choosing the Rebecca Caudill Young Readers' Book Award. It is intended for 4th through 8th graders. Sometimes the selections are a little sophisticated for the younger students in this group. However, we don't want to discourage our more advanced readers.

At Elizabeth Ide, we will continue to participate in the Monarch Award. Intended for kindergarten through 3rd grade students, it has been very popular.