Beehive Book Awards
The Beehive Book Award is an annual award sponsored by the Children’s Literature Association of Utah (CLAU), given to one book in each of these five categories: Children’s Fiction, Informational, Picture Book, Poetry, and Young Adult. Committees of teacher, librarian, and parent volunteer readers create annual short lists of 10-12 books in each category. These short lists are announced in March and then school and public libraries work to get students to vote on their favorites for the following school year. The winner in each category is announced the following year in April.
Granite School District Elementary School Libraries work hard to promote the Beehive Book Award program and encourage students to vote for their favorite books. They do this through displays, community engagement, and library promotions.
Displays
At Hillsdale Elementary School, Angela Pratt has a display for the 2015 Beehive Book Awards and highlights each category on a different shelf. She uses this display when doing story time and encourage her students to check-out the books nominated. Truman, Woodstock, and Rolling Meadows have also set up displays to draw attention to the books.
Community Engagement
At Rosecrest Elementary, Vala’dee Tanner, the media assistant, collaborated with the librarian at the Holladay library to come do a book talk for all students 4th-6th grade. Each grade came to the library and the public librarian spoke to them about the Beehive award nominees and encouraged them to participate in the voting process. Many schools rely on their PTA to help them buy copies of the Beehive nominees and to help track voting. At Driggs Elementary School, the PTA buys copies of each Beehive Book Award nominee and create a plan to read them in the classroom.
Promotion
Many media assistants have set up ballot boxes to help keep track of votes. Dian Morrison and Kim Liston, the media assistants at Woodstock Elementary, have a glass ballot box set up by their Beehive Book Award display. Students enjoy voting because they like to submit them in the special box, and like to see the votes build up over the school year.
Spotlight Author: Nikki Gregerson, Granite District Elementary Media Supervisor