Dexter, Missouri - It’s that time of the year again, in schools across the state of Missouri, students of all ages will be casting their votes at the Mark Twain, Truman, and Gateway Voting Parties. Each of these Voting Parties is divided into different age groups. The Gateway books are focused on the high school students (9-12th grade), while the Truman books are more associated with the junior high readers (6-8th grade), and the Mark Twain books are more open to the elementary readers.
Each year, the Missouri Association of School Librarians chooses a number of books by some well-known authors and writers to place on these three lists. The books that are chosen are usually of great variety. Some might be coming of age novels while others might be the start of a newer science fiction series.
If a number of these books on the list are read and student or reader successfully passes a computerized test on the Accelerated Reader Program on that specific novel, then they will be signed up for the Voting Party that took place in schools all over throughout the past week. At the Voting Party, the students will vote for their favorite book that was on the list and their favorite author that wrote the book. Students that read all of the books on the list instead of the minimum number required to attend the Voting Party, will receive a special trip at the end of the school year.
The fourth and fifth grade students at Central Elementary School just celebrated their Voting Party. To be able to attend the party and cast their vote, the students were required to read at least four of the twelve books on this year’s Mark Twain Award Nominees. The first through third grade have also participated in this event and have been reading the Show Me Award Nominees. The twenty-nine fourth and fifth graders that had the privilege of reading all twelve nominees will be rewarded with a trip to Cape Girardeau at the end of the school year.
The Richland students of all different ages and grade levels will be having their Voting Party within the next couple of weeks. The students at Richland will be rewarded with a pizza party thrown by their librarian and a number of their teachers.
The winning book and author of each of the Award Nominee categories will be announced in April at a Missouri Association of School Librarians conference that will take place in Tan-Tar-A.
Congratulations to all of this year’s dedicated readers!
