January Carnival of Children's Literature: Book Awards edition

Wizards Wireless is proud to host the January Carnival of Children's Literature! What's a carnival? It's a group of blog posts on a specific theme. The theme of this month's carnival is: Children's Book Awards.

Your post can be about anything at all on the subject, but here are a couple of questions about awards to get you started:

• What awards do you like the best?
• What are your predictions for this year?
• What are your favorite winners from previous years?
• What books do you wish had won in years past?
• Is there a lesser known award that you think should get more publicity?
• Are there any awards that you'd like to change the rules for?
• What award would you like to create?
  

For authors, illustrators, editors and publishers:

• If you've had the experience of winning an award, what was it like?
  
• What awards have your books won that have meant the most to you?
• What award would you most like to win?
  

For those that have been on award committees:

• What was the experience like? (just the parts you can tell us about, of course)
• What did you enjoy? What were your favorite parts?
• What did you like the least?
• Would you do it again?
• Which committee would you most like to serve on?

Feeling creative? Make up your own awards and chose a recipient. Come on, you know you want to.

There's no need to limit posts to national awards. They can be about student choice awards, state library association awards, awards given by publications, etc. Anything goes, as long as it applies to children's and young adult literature.

For an excellent listing of children's book awards, I highly recommend the Database of Award-Winning Children's Literature, compiled by librarian Lisa Bartle.

The finalists for the Cybils (Children's and YA Bloggers' Literary Awards) are being announced starting January 1. The American Library Awards (including the Newbery, the Caldecott and the first ever Odyssey, oh my) are being announced on January 14th.

The deadline for this carnival is on January 18 so that if you want to write about your reactions to this year's Cybils finalists or ALA award winners, you'll have plenty of time. The carnival will be posted on January 21. Posts don't have to be written in January... feel free to submit an older post if it's related to the theme.

To submit a post to the carnival (and I really hope you do, especially if it's your first carnival), go to Blog Carnival. Or e-mail your post to: wizardwireless [at] gmail [dot] com