Children's Book Awards

Peer-Reviewed article analysis

Awards! What are they good for? By Erlene Bishop Killeen

Bishop Killeen contends that despite the short amount of time focus is placed on Children’s Book Awards, they do have a place in the literary world and details the reasons why. Whilst the article is not from an Australian point of view, it is still pertinent as Australia only has the CBCA, KOALA and Inky awards, the latter two being voted for by children, though that does not invalidate them. She notes that all but one of the top selling books on the best sellers lists are award winners and the one that was not is Harry Potter (Killeen, 2009). In America, librarians are the ones who are voting for the books, drawing attention to the profession. The award winning books generally have long lifespans which makes them something that parents can share with the children. The awards promote discussion of youth literature in everyday situations (Killeen, 2009). She notes that it is not necessary for everyone to love every award winning book because not all books are for all people and that is a good thing else librarians would be out of a job (Killeen, 2009).

The CBCA nominated books get purchased by most libraries and are heavily borrowed during the year. The awards generate interest in reading and from that point of view can only be encouraged. Book popularity  is always a good thing for libraries because it generates a more general interest in reading and often, even if the patron is unable to borrow an item because it is onloan with 32 reserves, they borrow something else similar while they weight. An examples that come readily to mind is Twilight (Meyer, 2006), which generated interest in teenage girls and they often borrowed House of Night novels by P. C. Cast (2007-ongoing) and Vampire Diaries (Smith, 1991-1992). Though I would not use Twilight as an example of award winning fiction because it is not, unless it was for sales volume, it did get teenage girls reading novels, at least for a while.

The point was made about the lifespans of award winning books versus non award winning books “Charlotte’s Web did not get  that gold sticker” (Killeen, 2009) yet it is still considered a classic piece of children’s literature, whereas Rowan of Rin (Rodda, 1993) won the the CBCA award for younger readers and whilst I am familiar with it and loved the story, my high school library donated the entire series to me when they weeded it due to a lack of interest. Whilst that could be argued that it was a high school and interest in books for younger readers would have been limited anyway, it does demonstrate that the books that win awards may not be as long lived as one would expect.

This activity was related to my professional practice because it will be expected that I have knowledge of the different awards for books and their place within the library system when doing collection management if I manage to obtain a position as a children’s librarian.