This winter the American Library Association (ALA) held its Youth Media Awards, revealing the year’s picks for best books, videos and materials for children—including the recipients of the Caldecott, Coretta Scott King, and the Newbery book awards. Also familiar to many is the ALA’s Theodor Seuss Geisel Award, named for the children’s author better known as Dr. Seuss. Overseeing the selection of the winners as head of the Geisel Award Committee was The Miquon School’s Librarian, Sarah Stippich.

As committee chair, Stippich was able to bring her first-hand knowledge of what makes great literature for early readers to her Library Specialist classes at Miquon. Forming a Junior Geisel Committee, students in grades 1-6 conducted their own critical evaluation of the new books up for consideration for the award, together with Stippich.

Together the children reviewed all of the Geisel candidate books for readability, vocabulary, sentence length, picture clues, book design, and appeal—all of the same categories the actual committee uses in their consideration of potential awardees. They later worked on building their skills and abilities to advocate for their personal favorites.

“It was awesome,” shared second grader Avea Sellmyer. “It’s really exciting when you have no idea what book they’ll choose for the award.”

According to Stippich, “We had so many kids reading and getting excited about new books. In the end, Miquon students’ feedback about the eligible books was among the many helpful inputs to the committee’s final selections of the Geisel winner and honor books.”

According to the ALA, Geisel Award winners are recognized for their literary and artistic achievements that demonstrate creativity and imagination for children in Kindergarten through second grade.

The committee selected Corey R. Tabor as the 2019 award winner for his book, “Fox the Tiger,” as well as four additional honorees. All recipients will receive their awards in Washington, D.C., this June.