Toolkit Promotes Children’s Choice Book Award Voting

To encourage voting among children and teens for the 2012 Children’s Choice Book Awards, the Children’s Book Council (CBC) offers a Digital Toolkit filled with resources for use online and in stores, libraries, and classrooms.

Online voting for the 30 finalists in six categories, including Author and Illustrator of the Year, opened yesterday, March 14, at BookWeekOnline.com and continues until May 3. In addition to individual balloting by children’s and teens, booksellers, teachers, and librarians can tally and enter kids’ votes from their stores, classrooms or libraries as a group.  The winners will be announced at a gala awards ceremony on May 7 at Espace in New York City as part of Children’s Book Week (May 7 - 13).

Materials in the Digital Toolkit include templates for “I Voted” stickers and a “Read to Vote” button for websites, as well as sample Tweets and Facebook posts. Booksellers are also encouraged to display a ballot box in stores to generate excitement and increase participation.

The Children’s Book Council and Every Child A Reader (The CBC Foundation) launched the Children’s Choice Book Awards program in 2008 as a way to provide young readers with an opportunity to voice their opinions about the books being written for them and to help develop a reading list that will motivate children to read more and cultivate a love of reading. This year, CBC hopes to double the record-breaking number of 500,000 votes received last year by getting one million young readers to participate.