I conducted Mock Caldecott Elections with approximately 300 kids -- 6 K-4 class  groups from Bedminster School, 1 group from the Bridgewater Public Libraryand here were the results:

RESULTS by group	GOLD (WINNER)	SILVER  (HONORS)	SILVER  (HONORS)	SILVER  (HONORS)
Hofman, Lovejoy, Galli	Duck, Rabbit	Higher, Higher	Curious Garden
Valentine, Rosnell	Higher, Higher	Duck, Rabbit	Birds	All God's Critters
Oliveri, Rosania	All God's Critters	Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed	14 Cows
Morales, Lykes, Benkendorf	Duck, Rabbit	Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed	Higher, Higher
Alfieri, Monell, Kenner	Higher, Higher	Lousy, Rotten, Stinkin' Grapes	Birds	Moonshot
Adamson, Roth,	Duck, Rabbit	Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed	Tsunami	Mermaid Queen
Bridgewater Library	The Mitten	Lion and the Mouse	All God's Critters
TOTALS:
Duck, Rabbit	3 golds, 1 silver
Higher, Higher	2 golds, 2 silvers
All God's Critters	1 gold, 2 silvers
Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed	3 silvers
Birds	2 silvers
The Mitten	1 gold
Lousy Rotten Stinkin' Grapes	1 silver
Curious Garden	1 silver
14 Cows for America	1 silver
Tsunami	1 silver
Moonshot	1 silver
Mermaid Queen	1 silver
Lion and the Mouse	1 silver

Title	Author	Illustrator	comments	votes received	final results:
14 cows for America	Deedy, Carmen Agra	Gonzalez, Thomas	gorgeous, two towers motif in each picture?	46	1 silver
All God's critters	Staines, Bill	Nelson, Kadir	theatrical	74	1 gold, 1 silver
All in a day	Rylant, Cynthia	McClure, Nikki	cut paper, old fashioned	17
Birds	Henkes, Kevin	Dronzek, Laura	big favorite on acpl blog	48	2 silvers
Chicken Little	Emberley, Rebecca	Author & Emberley, Ed	vivid collage	29
City I love	Hopkins, Lee Bennett	Hall, Marcellus	extraordinary cityscapes	49
Creature ABC	Zuckerman, Andrew	author	photos - ineligible since previous book?	33
Curious Garden	Brown, Peter	author	retro pix, inspired by NYC high-line project	51	1 silver
Duck! Rabbit!	Rosenthal, Amy	Lichtenheld, Tom	simple imaginative	62	3 golds, 1 silver
Gertrude is Gertude is Gertrude is Gertrude	Winter, Jonah	Brown, Calef	artistic creativity	3
Higher! Higher!	Patricelli, Leslie	author	simple exhuberance	62	2 golds, 2 silvers
Lion and the mouse	Pinkney, Jerry	Author	tremendous, OREGON GOLD	42
Listen to the wind: the story of Dr. Greg and three cups of tea	Mortenson, Greg	Roth, Susan L.	textured collages	20
Looking Like Me	Myers,Walter Dean	Myers, Christopher	creative, affirming collages	34
Lousy rotten stinkin' grapes	Palatini, Margie	Moser, Barry	characterization	53	1 silver
Mama says	Walker, Rob D.	Dillon, Leo & Diane	native american art - framable	22
Mermaid queen	Corey, Shana	Fotheringham, Edwin	true story, oregon honor	23	1 silver
Mitten	Aylesworth, Jim	McClintock, Barbara	new version of traditional story	44
Moonshot: the flight of Apollo 11	Floca, Brian	author		43	1 silver
Naked Mole Rat gets dressed	Willems, Mo	author	simple underground illus perfect	59	3 silvers
Nasreen's secret school: a true story from Afghanistan	Winter, Jeanette	Author		9
Once upon a twice	Doyen, Denise	Moser, Barry	clever wordplay beautiful art	60
One Beetle Too Many			expressive pictures, clever nonfiction	53
Pouch!	Stein, David Ezra	Author	OREGON HONOR	23
Princess Hyacinth (the surprising tale of a girl who floated)	Heide, Florence Parry	Smith, Lane		20
Red sings from treetops: a year in colors	Sidman, Joyce	Zagarenski, Pamela	folk art, great little details	20
Tsunami!	Kajikawa, Kimiko	Young, Ed	breathtaking collage illus	44	1 silver

Methodology:

MOCK CALDECOTT ELECTION PROCEDURES

Set up the room with space in front of you for kids to sit and approx. 25 Caldecott Candidate books on tables around the back of the room. (Books were selected by asking on PUBYAC and NJYAC for recommendations and compiling a master list. Allen PL, Wells College, Bluffton PL, Tempe PL, and Judy Freeman's suggestions were particularly helpful.  We then narrowed the 100+ books to a more manageable 25 for the program.) 

Before the program, I inserted bookmarks pre-printed with a column of numbers into each book.  The numbered column makes figuring out how many votes a book got easier.  I wrote the first word of  the title on each bookmark, both so that if it fell out we'd know where it came from and also to be able to do final tallies later.

1.  Have kids sit on floor in a front of you.  Ask what the Caldecott Award is for; get a definition of illustrator.  (5 min.)

2.  Show some winner(s) and honor books from past years; leaf through pictures; ask kids to help figure out what made the illustrations "exceptional."  Read some of the comments made the ALA Caldecott Cmte. in their press releases justifying their choices (available on the ALA Caldecott site).(10min.)

3.  Talk about how Caldecott Committee (librarians) decide in secret – no one knows for sure which books they are liking best ... the books on the tables our best guess -- asked librarians all over the country for their favorites -- then the librarians at our library chose our 25 favorites for kids to look through). (2 min.)

4.  Give the kids 10 minutes to examine the 25 candidates keeping in mind that they may chose 5 favorites -- when they have looked through all 25, have them come up to get a pencil and then go mark their initials on the bookmarks of their 5 favorites.  (10 min.)

5. Collect the books and read aloud those with the most votes (with longer picture books, I read aloud a section and booktalked the rest).   (30 min.)

6. Stand the semi-finalist books up around the room and ask the kids to

stand by the book that they think should be the Caldecott Winner.   Optional: If honor books are not obvious, after the Winner is determined, tell the students who voted for that one to move to their second choices and determine honor books. Or have the students who voted for books that received too few votes move to one of the remaining books that is their favorite 2nd choice. (5 min.)

7. Thank the students for voting; announce where their results will be

posted; and tell them to when the "Real" Caldecott Winners will be announced.

Carol Simon Levin
Somerset County Library / Bridgewater Branch

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