‘Tis the season of school visits and I’m lucky enough to have been invited by the NSW Branch of the Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) to visit four local schools who are participating in the CBCA Sun Project: Book Of The Year Shadow Judging program.
The Shadow Judging encourages young voices from groups across Australia to join the conversation about the annual CBCA Book of the Year Shortlist and choose their own winners. Groups choose one category from the shortlists to read, discuss and reflect upon, and then create a creative response to each book in the category and vote on their favourites.
The 2024 Shadow Judging Book of the Year Awards winners are decided by the kids’ votes, and will be announced as part of the awards rollout on August 16, putting the thoughts of young readers right into the mix in deciding the best books of the year.
It’s such a great initiative to encourage young readers to engage critically and creatively with the shortlisted titles.
One of the stated benefits of the Shadow Judging program is to ‘support the development of reading breadth, depth and a sense that reading is a cultural practice where opinions are shared in a supportive reading community’ and I am here for that!
So, when I was asked by one of the four schools, in particular, to bring my top tips for literary judging, I took my role very seriously and reached out to my Your Kid’s Next Read podcast co-host Megan Daley to provide tips from someone who’s experienced and respected in the field.
Megan Daley’s top five tips for literary judges
As well as being my partner in Quality Waffle, Megan Daley is a Teacher Librarian and has been awarded the ASLA Australian Teacher Librarian of the Year 2023 and the SLAQ Queensland Teacher Librarian of the Year, as well as the national Dromkeen Librarians Award.
She is the author of the bestselling book ‘Raising Readers’ as well as ‘Teacher, Teacher’ and ‘The Beehive’. A former national vice-president of the Children’s Book Council of Australia, Megan is also a speaker, regular literary judge, and festival curator.
Megan has been a literary judge for the Queensland Literary Awards and The Wilderness Society Awards as well as for several regional literary awards.
In short, Megan has credentials in this space.
These are her top five tips on literary judging for the CBCA Shadow Judges – and for those brilliant educators who are leading groups of ‘Shadowers’ at their schools.
1. It’s not about you
It is very easy to fall into the trap of being drawn to a book for an award because you like it. I have been guilty of this myself and I work very hard on this. Taking out personal opinion is tricky but to help, fall back on the criteria and read knowing that the book may not have been written with you as the target audience but that does not mean it is not worthy.
2. Criteria, criteria, criteria
My day job is as a teacher and as a teacher and a mother of teens who are all doing assignments right now – always start and end judging (and assignment writing!) with the criteria. Read the judging criteria, highlight the criteria, unpack what the criteria is asking for and keep the cirteria close so that you can keep going back to it.
3. Target audience
Think about who a particular book was written for and does it meet the reading needs of that audience. If it is a picture book aimed at toddlers – will it engage them in all the right ways? If it is a picture book for a mature audience – will it make the reader work hard and think deeply? Do the illustrations and text work in unison?
4. Wow factor
After having considered all of the points above look at whether a book has something extra special about it that elevates it above the rest? It may be something you cannot quite put your finger on, it may be a super original idea done in an engaging way, it may be astonishing interplay between text and images. If a book makes you go WOW, then that is a book to put on your own personal shortlist.
5. Read every book
Read every book in the mix for the judging – every single book needs to be given a chance and some books may surprise and delight you. Each book needs to be judged individually but do read all the books in the mix.
Are you new here? Welcome to my blog! I’m Allison Tait, aka A.L. Tait, and I’m the author of middle-grade series, The Mapmaker Chronicles, The Ateban Cipher, and the Maven & Reeve Mysteries. My latest novel THE FIRST SUMMER OF CALLIE McGEE is out now. You can find out more about me here, and more about my books here.
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