January 2020 has arrived and I can’t wait to vote for my favorite MCBA book! For those of you who don’t live in Massachusetts, or just don’t know about MCBA, it stands for Massachusetts Children’s Book Award. Children around the state have the opportunity to vote for their nominated favorite book. It’s an award powered by kids’ choice!
As a teacher, I also read the books nominated. I loved every book which means I need time to think long and hard before voting. There are two books that stand out to me for opposing reasons: I knew I would love the one about the dog, but I didn’t expect to like the ‘basketball’ book.
I knew from the title that I would love Patricia Maclachlan’s The Poet’s Dog. Even with my high expectations, the communication between Teddy (the dog) and the two children exceeded all expectations. I laughed at dog antics. I cried over Teddy’s loss. When I was done, I gave my own pups an extra squeeze.
The Crossover by Kwame Alexander was a book I avoided as I made my way down the list. Maybe I didn’t want to read it because of my terrible experience during a fourth grade P.E. basketball skills class (which is a story for another time). But the basketball loving students in my current classroom devoured this book. They passed it to other kids. They held it high above their heads’ and claimed that I had to read it. So I did…and I was wrong. This book is about so much more than basketball. The father-son relationship and the use of verse to tell the story makes me want to read it again, and then pass it along to the next reader echoing my students’ insistence: “You have to read this.”
Voting hasn’t happened yet and you only need to have read 5 books from the MCBA list! For more information, check out:
http://massachusettschildrensbookaward.blogspot.com/
Happy reading, happy writing, happy sharing!
Loved The Crossover. Will have to get the Poets Dog and look into the contest.
Definitely look into it! I’ve been looking through nominations from past years for next reads too.