Waukesha County Federated Library System: Kids' Choice Awards
No Hollywood celebrities showed up in the middle of the afternoon in Big Bend, Wis., February 14—although two members of the Milwaukee Wave soccer team dropped by to sign posters for every student in attendance—and there was no green slime involved. But the Kids’ Choice Awards to pick the top kids’ reads of the year, like the Nickelodeon show with that same name, puts kids in control of picking the winners and emphasizes fun.
The Waukesha County Federated Library System program, which began in 2001, provides a much more significant benefit than a one-night cable television diversion, however. The Kids’ Choice Awards have brought public and school libraries together to better cooperate on their shared goal of promoting reading by engaging children in the pre-teen years and giving them sense of ownership in the project.
“The program acknowledges children’s choices for the best books—not the teachers’ or the schools’ or a committee of librarians,” says WCFLS Library Services Specialist Claudia Backus. Backus adds that she has noticed more successful teen boards and book clubs since the Kids’ Choice Awards program began.
Students in fourth, fifth and sixth grades submit ballots throughout the summer at the county’s libraries, and the top 15 books become nominees for the annual awards, which are held in a different Waukesha County elementary school each February. WCFLS ensures that each public and school library has copies of the 15 nominees, as well as posters and bookmarks promoting the awards.
Once a student reads at least five of those 15 books, they get to vote for their favorites. This year, nearly 1,400 students met the five-book requirement—and as a reward received free soccer tickets from the Wave—while Backus says she thinks many more also participated in the program but did not quite reach five books. Considering the average length of the books on this year’s list is 339 pages, it is quite an accomplishment!
With 210 votes, this year’s winner was, not unexpectedly, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, one of the chapters to the smashingly successful series by British author J.K. Rowling. But in a surprisingly close race, Kate Di Camillo’s Because of Winn-Dixie was the first runner-up with 206 votes, just four behind, and another Di Camillo entry, The Tale of Despereaux, finished as the second runner-up with 177 votes. Thus, despite the seemingly overwhelming popularity of Rowling’s books, in winning the 2006 awards, Harry Potter only received about 15 percent of the vote. This demonstrates that students in Waukesha County are enjoying a very wide array of books.
“Every year we debate on whether to put Harry Potter books on the list, but since this is the kids’ choice, it wouldn’t be very legitimate without a J.K. Rowling title,” Backus says. “But librarians and teachers were very encouraged that the vote was so close.”