Episode 402: Minnesota Youth Reading Awards

Hello! Thank you so much for listening to Reading With Libraries!

We’re so glad you’re able to join our podcast book group. This week we’re talking about the Minnesota Youth Reading Awards!

We are the Central Minnesota Libraries Exchange and our members are libraries of all sorts: public, schools, academics, special libraries, archives, and history centers.

In our book group podcast, we like to talk books and share information for our library community doing Reader’s Advisory work. It is impossible to be an expert on all the wonderful books out there! So we pick a new genre or topic each week to discuss and explore to help you learn more about an area that you may not be familiar with.

We like to keep things casual here, there are no “right” or “wrong” books to share! We are happy to share titles and add to our TBR lists!

We are so pleased to welcome our Guest Host, Jennifer Hill! Jennifer was an elementary school media specialist and is now an assistant professor at St. Cloud State University.

Beverages:

Each week we like to connect the theme of our books with our beverages, and we each came prepared with our own drink to enjoy while we talk about our books. You are an important part of this book group, so if you don’t have your beverage to enjoy, go get one! We’ll wait!

Ready? Let’s share what we’re drinking! Each of our beverages will have a recipe or a link on our episode page, so you can try them yourself! This week’s we’re trying beverages that would be great to share with any young reader in your life!

Sugar cream with maple syrup

  • 4 oz of 2% milk
  • 1 ½ oz regular maple syrup
  • 1 to 2 drops of pure vanilla extract
  • Heat up your milk in a milk frother, or if you’d prefer, heat it in the microwave and use a
    small electric frother. Then add the amounts of maple syrup and vanilla into the cup and
    finish off with the hot frothed milk.

Rainbow Sherbet Float

Scoop rainbow sherbet into a 12 oz glass and top with ginger ale. Careful not to overflow! Top with a fun curly straw.

Peanut Butter and Jelly Smoothie

1 banana, ½ an apple in slices, ¼ cup raw almonds, 2 tbsps peanut butter powder, 1 ½ cups frozen berries, 200ml container apple juice

  • Place all ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth.

Genre Discussion:

We’re going to share some background information on the Minnesota Youth Reading Awards, known as MYRA. https://www.myrahome.org/

The purpose of MYRA is to “administer yearly “read and vote” awards programs, providing nominee titles that offer opportunities for Minnesota youth to see themselves and others in the pages, to make new connections, and to engage and enjoy the world of reading.”

  • Celebrate reading through nominating high-quality youth literature each year
  • Circulate resources regarding our nominees
  • Represent literacy educators and librarians at regional conferences and events
  • Encourage media specialists, librarians, teachers and public librarians to engage with Minnesota readers and the MYRA awards
  • Facilitate the only student-chosen book award in the state of Minnesota

MYRA currently has two awards for young readers in Minnesota: the Maud Hard Lovelace Award and the Star of the North Award. 

The Star of the North Award promotes quality and engaging picture books for our young readers in Minnesota. This award focuses on grades Kindergarten, 1st grade and 2nd grade.

The Maud Hart Lovelace Award has two divisions: Division I focuses on grades 3-5 and Division II focuses on grades 6-8. Nominees must be works of fiction and not classified as a picture book.

We’ll discuss a few other youth book awards. If you are working on updating your library’s collection, these would be helpful awards to consult to help you order good materials for your library or media center. Make sure to check our shownotes page for links to these awards and other resources that can help you in your library work. 

Other Youth Book Awards of note: 

American Indian Youth Literature Award: Awarded biennially, the AIYLA identifies and honors the very best writing and illustrations by and about Native Americans and Indigenous peoples of North America. Books selected to receive the award present Indigenous North American peoples in the fullness of their humanity.

Sydney Taylor Book Awards:  presented annually to outstanding books for children and teens that authentically portray the Jewish experience. Presented by the Association of Jewish Libraries since 1968, the award encourages the publication and widespread use of quality Judaic literature. Gold medals are presented in three categories: Younger Readers, Older Readers, and Teen Readers.

The Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature: The goal of this award is to honor and recognize individual work about Asian/Pacific Americans and their heritage, based on literary and artistic merit. They have categories for YA literature, Children’s literature, and Picture Books

Walter Dean Myer Book Award for Outstanding Children’s Literature: From the organization We Need Diverse Books, the annual Walter Dean Myers Awards for Outstanding Children’s Literature recognizes diverse authors (or co-authors) whose works feature diverse main characters and address diversity in a meaningful way. 

Tomas Rivera Mexican American Children’s Book award: The goal of this award is to honor authors and illustrators who create literature that depicts the Mexican American experience.

Dolly Gray Children’s Literature Award: This award is to recognize authors, illustrators, and publishers of high quality fictional and biographical children, intermediate, and young adult books that appropriately portray individuals with developmental disabilities.

Suggested Reading Resources:  

Award Winners:

2019 MHL DIvision I Winners (Grades three thru five)

The Terrible Two, by Mac Barnett

Miles Murphy is not happy to be moving to Yawnee Valley, a sleepy town that’s famous for one thing and one thing only: cows. In his old school, everyone knew him as the town’s best prankster, but Miles quickly discovers that Yawnee Valley already has a prankster, and a great one. If Miles is going to take the title from this mystery kid, he is going to have to raise his game.

It’s prankster against prankster in an epic war of trickery, until the two finally decide to join forces and pull off the biggest prank ever seen: a prank so huge that it would make the members of the International Order of Disorder proud.

In The Terrible Two, bestselling authors Mac Barnett and Jory John have created a series that has its roots in classic middle-grade literature yet feels fresh and new at the same time.

2019 MHL DIvision II Winners (Grades six thru eight)

A Night Divided, by Jennifer A. Nielsen

With the rise of the Berlin Wall, Gerta finds her family suddenly divided. She, her mother, and her brother Fritz live on the eastern side, controlled by the Soviets. Her father and middle brother, who had gone west in search of work, cannot return home. Gerta knows it is dangerous to watch the wall, yet she can’t help herself. She sees the East German soldiers with their guns trained on their own citizens; she, her family, her neighbors and friends are prisoners in their own city.

But one day on her way to school, Gerta spots her father on a viewing platform on the western side, pantomiming a peculiar dance. Gerta concludes that her father wants her and Fritz to tunnel beneath the wall, out of East Berlin. However, if they are caught, the consequences will be deadly. No one can be trusted. Will Gerta and her family find their way to freedom?

Conclusion:

Thank you so much to Jennifer for joining us for this discussion about the Minnesota Youth Reading Awards! And thank you to our listeners for joining our podcast book group!

Join us next Thursday with another genre, more guest hosts for our book group, and more books to share and discuss. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast so you don’t miss a single episode! And if you want to hear more about the work we do in libraries – which is always interesting! – subscribe to our podcast Linking Our Libraries.

Bring your book ideas, bring your beverages, and join us back here on Thursday!