Vacation Reads…(kind of)

As Summer begins, I thought I’d use vacation season to recognize some State-based book awards. In memory of some family vacations I’ll not bore you by describing, we’ll start with FLORIDA. (Yes, there’s more there than beaches & mouse ears).

1. The Florida Book Awards–

Its sixth annual competitions now complete, Florida Book Awards announces winners for books published in 2011 in seven categories of competition. “The Florida Book Awards exists to identify and profile the Sunshine State’s best books and their authors,” notes FBA Director Wayne A. Wiegand. “These FBA winners clearly demonstrate the quality and depth of Florida’s increasingly rich literary culture.”

Submissions were read by eight juries of three members each nominated from across the state by cosponsoring organizations. Jurors are authorized to select up to three medalists (including one Gold Winner, one Silver Runner-up, and one Bronze Medalist) in each of the eight categories; jurors are also authorized to make no selections in a given year.

Click on the link for a list of winners. You know how I feel about awards with discretion enough NOT to award just for the sake of awarding. 🙂

2. President’s Book Awards– flbookpub.org  Sadly, the .org website for the Fl Publisher’s association was down, but the link will take you to an EXCELLENT blog entry about this year’s winners. I will try to update this when I can get the .org site to pull up.

3. Children’s Book Award–

The Florida Reading Association invites Pre-Kindergarten through Second Grade students to participate in voting for the Florida Children’s Book Award. Nominations for books to be considered for the school year are due by December 15. The books nominated must have been copyrighted within the last five years and be currently in print. A nomination form can be found under the Recommend a Book link.

Once students have read or heard the nominated books, their votes can be tallied and submitted to the Children’s Book Award Chairman though the online form. Ballots must be received no later than April 15. Results will be announced on the FRA web site and in the FRA newsletter. The winning book will be honored at the FRA Conference in October.

Yay! Kids voting. 🙂

4. Florida Historical Society Awards– This well-respected society gives out 18 awards for everything from academic papers to book-length explorations of FL history. One of my favorite professors was a recipient of one of these. (Yay Dr. Revels!) If you’d like to learn more about the incredibly complex part of the world that is Florida, these would be good places to start. Nominations are mailed in, read by a jury and voted on.

Entries are evaluated by independent panels of judges appointed by the Society. Judges will carefully consider each entry based on factors including (but not limited to) quality of scholarship, factual accuracy, clarity of expression, original thinking, significance of topic and overall contribution to knowledge of Florida history. The judges’ decisions are final.

 

Send all entries to the Florida Historical Society, 435 Brevard Avenue, Cocoa, FL 32922. Entry deadlines for some awards are on Jan. 10, while other awards have a March 1 deadline. Entrants are advised to adhere strictly to deadlines for each award category. The term “submit by…” means entries (or nominations) must be RECEIVED at the Florida Historical Society office by 5 p.m. on the date specified. Entries received later will not be considered. Entries must be clearly marked as to award category.

 

5. SSYRA Awards– In the world of school & reading, there are some programs out there that push kids to read books at/above their reading level, irregardless of their interest level, and then take a quiz, earn some points and move on. Read HERE for why this leaves me conflicted (her thoughts are more coherent).  Anyway, this is thankfully, not one of those programs:

The Sunshine State Young Reader’s Award Program is a statewide reading motivation program for students in grades 3-8. The program, cosponsored by the School Library Media Services Office of the Department of Education and the Florida Association for Media in Education (FAME), began in 1983. The purpose of the SSYRA Program is to encourage students to read independently for personal satisfaction, based on interest rather than reading level.

Sunshine State books are selected for their wide appeal, literary value, varied genres, curriculum connections, and/or multicultural representation. Students are encouraged to read books that are above, on, and below their tested reading level in order to improve their reading fluency

Once the kids have read 3 books off the list, they can then vote for their favorite. 🙂

6. Florida Teens Read– This is a more grown-up version of #5.

Teens in Florida read and Florida media specialists know it! Florida Teens Read is a list of 15 titles that have been chosen by a committee of thirteen media specialists specifically to engage high school students (grades 9 through 12) and reflect their interests as well as represent a variety of genres, formats, reading levels, viewpoints, and ethnic and cultural perspectives.Teens are encouraged to read at least three of the titles on the current list. From April 1 to April 30 each year a link will be available on the FAME web page for students to vote for their favorite book.

Coolness. We have a similar program here, and I always like to see what the kids who actually read 3 books for FUN vote for. 🙂

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