Warning: I may change my mind…
For the past 5 years, I have done a Mock Caldecott unit with students as we come back to school in January. And while January is far away, the year is quietly winding down which means the reflection begins on which illustrations took my breath away. And there were many. Last year, I ballooned my choices but it turned out to be too hard to get through for my students. So this year there are a few changes.
One, I am reading all of these books aloud in the weeks leading up to our unit. While the students will still read them in their group, they will have experienced the full text with us all first.
Two, I am limiting our choices to 12. That way we can leasurely work through the unit, savor the illustrations, and give it the time it needs rather than skim through pages in order to come up with a winner.
Three, each group will pick their winner. Every year we have had a vote for class pick, but this year, I will let our groups select and root for their individual winners. We will, however, vote for an overall winner in all of my English classes combined.
The lessons will not change much; I use previous winners to discuss the different components of the award and then students grab the books they will discuss that day and rank. Each group gets a packet with the titles and a voting sheet. The slides I use are here and are pretty straight forward. The voting packet I use is here each group gets one and it helps them keep track of their scores.
So which books have I chosen for the year? (Not that I matters because we almost never pick the winner, ha)
Two potentials that I may add but I haven’t quite decided yet because then I am over 12 and I don’t want to be over 12 hmmm
What are your Mock Caldecott choices?
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Pernille Ripp 
A fantastic list. Some of these are my top picks too. And there are a few I’m not familiar with. I need to do some more reading!
I would love to do the mock awards this year but I’m finding it hard to buy the books. As a private school librarian this was not a problem. Do you have suggestions?
Faye Y
I would use the public library and reserve them all
Good picks! I started with 8 books because I only see each class every other week in the library. Tough battle this year, as always!
Thank you for the list. I find it so difficult to narrow it down to 12, but it just has to be done. Appreciate the ever-present note about this not being about “liking” the books. I’m looking forward to trying this with a class of 1st graders and helping other colleagues wanting to try it as well. These resources are great.
I choose wrong each year I’ve been trying to guess. I just can’t seem to push past one that I love more than the rest.
Did you change your mind?