2021 Georgia Children's Picturebook Award Winners

This year's Georgia Children's Picture Book Award winner is Hair Love, written by Matthew A. Cherry and illustrated by Vashti Harrison. Hair Love was also the second place book at my school. My students loved this sweet story about a father who tries to fix his daughter's hair while her mother is away.

The first place book in our voting was The Cave by Rob Hodgson. This is a hilarious book about a wolf who tries everything to get a little creature to leave its cave.  

And our third place book was The Scarecrow, written by Beth Ferry and illustrated by the Fan Brothers. This book is about the connection between two unlikely friends. The rhyming text and beautiful pictures were so engaging to my students. Several of them actually cried when I read this book to them.

As always, my students enjoyed reading the books on this year's Georgia Children's Picturebook Award nominee list and participating in voting!

Jungle Book Fair

We recently held our spring book fair. Last spring, I had everything prepared for our book fair but it was cancelled after school closed due to covid. So this year, I used the spring 2020 theme, which was Book Fair Jungle: Elephants, Tigers, and Books Oh My! The inside and outside of the media center were decorated to correspond with the theme.  

Several changes were put in place to make this book fair safe. Students were required to sanitize their hands as they entered the book fair. Previously, teachers were invited to sign up for one preview time and one shopping time. As a result, we often had two classes in the book fair at once. During this fair, I created a video preview for students to watch and asked teachers to sign up for a shopping time only.  This allowed us to have one class at a time in the library. Our digital learners were invited to shop after school. My students and teachers were so excited to have an in-person book fair that they did not mind any of the new procedures!

During this fair, my younger readers loved Babysitters Little Sister: Karen's Worst Day by Ann M. Martin, Hair Love by Matthew A. Cherry, and My Very Favorite Book in the Whole Wide World by Malcolm Mitchell. My older readers bought Dog Man: Mothering Heights by Dav Pilkey and Hide and Seeker by Daka Hermon.

Because we did not have any family events, this was not our most successful book fair ever. However, we made enough money to purchase new books and filament for our 3D printer!