Awards celebrate children’s authors

“You could really feel their excitement.”

The students also did an original performance for each book nominated.

The award was extra special for Slade, since it was voted on by children, his readers.

“There’s so many choices that they have and if they choose your book it feels that much better,” he said.

It’s something that Susin Nielsen, Snow Willow Award winner for Grade 6 to Grade 8 for her book Nerd Word, agrees with.

“It felt particularly amazing because the award was voted on by the kids, so it was voted on by the readers,” she said.

One of the reasons the awards were brought in nine years ago was to encourage children to read.

“In the information age you have to read to get ahead, and I think they are learning that,” Slade said.

“I do think books still play a big role in kids’ lives,” Nielsen said.

“They don’t all love to read, I think that’s always been the case, most of them do seem to love to read and I do think definitely there is a good place for books.”

Each of three categories had 10 books nominated – Melanie Watt’s Scaredy Squirrel took home the Shining Willow Award for kindergarten to Grade 2 readers, but she was not there to accept it.

“We have grown to where we have more than 12,300 children voting every year,” said Florence Barton, president of the Saskatchewan Young Readers Choice Awards, explaining the number of votes go up by about 1,000 a year.

“They need to be quality Canadian children’s literature and they also need to represent a span of writing so all children can find a book that they would be interested in writing,” she said.

The group tries to have Aboriginal and Saskatchewanian authors in each category every year.

klavoie@panow.com

by Kellah Lavoie

Awards celebrate children’s authors

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