Kids Are Authors!

A couple months ago I was invited by the folks at Scholastic Educational to be a part of an amazing school program. I must confess that I had never heard of Kids Are Authors™. Basically, it's a picture book competition open to all elementary schools across Canada. Every year groups of three or more students (with some direction from their teacher) participate in writing and illustrating an original picture book. A number of finalists are chosen from the entries, and then Scholastic Canada invites local authors, illustrators and librarians to choose a grand prize winner and up to three honour award winners from the final entries. So I was one of the lucky people asked to be a judge! The other judges involved this year were the authors Marsha Skrypuch and Joanne Richter, and librarian Rosemary Renton.

The final judging took place two weeks ago. It was an amazing experience, I must say. That was the first time I'd ever actually been to the offices of Scholastic Educational in Markham (which, by the way is in another country as far as I'm concerned, since I had to take TTC to get there. Two and a half hours on trains and buses! Oy). That place is huge. Everyone involved in this project was very helpful and friendly (we even got a delicious lunch! Yum). And now I have an idea how editors must feel when they are looking over submissions of picture book manuscripts. It's really tough to make judgments, because all of the stories had strengths, and all of the illustrations were really quite impressive. But us gals worked really well as a team, and in the end we were all in agreement as to who the winner should be. Can't mention the winner yet, but as soon as it's official, I'll write a post about it for sure.

The winning school will receive a cash prize of $1,000, by the way, as well as a commemorative plaque. The three Honour Award winners will receive a $100 cash prize and a plaque, too. But the best part is that the winning entry will be published and distributed by Scholastic Book Fairs and sold as a bona fide picture book! The money made from the sales of the winning book goes back into supporting the Kids Are Authors™ program, and any extra cash made is donated to various literary organizations.

Dang, I sure wish this program was around when I was a kid!!

Comments

[Bev Katz Rosenbaum]

You're such a celeb--on panels and everything! Sounds like fun. And you didn't tell me you illustrated a Gordon Korman! GK is my hero!

And guess what...you've been tagged! See my blog (www.myspace.com/bevkatzrosenbaum) for deets!

[Ellen]

What fun that would have been. I love that program. I noticed a winning book for sale at the Scholastic book fair at my kids school. I could imagine how ecstatic that child must have felt to see that.