Adults, you'll be happy to know that kids are still reading...a lot! WNIJ's Peter Medlin talked with school librarian Nichole Folkman about the Reader's Choice Award winners from the Association of Illinois School Library Educators –- the books Illinois students loved the most in 2023...
Peter Medlin, WNIJ (PM): "Kindergarten-2nd grade is the Monarch Award. And I saw the winner was ‘Are You A Cheeseburger?’ by Monica Arnaldo, can you talk a little bit about that book?"
Nichole Folkman (NF): "Oh, it's an absolutely adorable little book! A raccoon finds something in an alleyway. He's been looking for food and doesn't know that it's a seed. He has no idea what it is, but knows that he loves cheeseburgers, and was like, ‘Are you a cheeseburger?’ And they're like, ‘I think I'm supposed to be planted.’ And so, raccoon plants the seed, and they wonder together and wish together, ‘What are you going to turn into? What are you going to be? Are you going to be a cheeseburger?’ It's a lot of fun and very funny. The young kids, of course, always really love funny books.”
(PM): “I was going to say, a cute raccoon AND it's about cheeseburgers? In the words of Stan Lee: ‘nuff said.’ How else do I need to sell it to you? And just to give people an idea also of how the voting works, I saw that over 66,000 Illinois students voted for the Monarch Award across more than 300 different schools."
(NF): "Absolutely, yes. What's great about the Monarch is that because picture books are meant to be shared, the librarians and classroom teachers are the ones experiencing this with them. And so, they do get a lot of readership and a lot of participation because it can be very guided by the adults in their lives. As they get older, they're doing it a little more on their own, so we sometimes have fewer votes, but I will tell you that teenagers and middle school kids are reading!"
(PM): "Up next, we've got the Bluestem Award. This is 3rd- 5th grade. Can you tell us about the winner?"
(NF): "The winner of the Bluestem Award was ‘Twins’. It is a graphic novel the students absolutely just loved. It is about twins who've always done everything together and now, suddenly, they're in middle school and one twin is not sure that she really wants to spend all of her time with her twin anymore. They haven't talked about it before, just suddenly they're in different classes. They both decided to run for student council president, and they are running against each other!"
(PM): “Drama! Political intrigue! That one is written by Varian Johnson and drawn by Shannon Wright.
That’s kind of a perfect segue into the conversation about the Rebecca Caudill Award, which is 4th- 8th grade. And that winner is also a comic book, also a graphic novel, but it's a graphic memoir."
(NF): “Yes, it's called ‘When Stars are Scattered’ and it was written by Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed, whose story it is. It’s the story of two brothers who are refugees and looking out for each other and are orphaned, at least to their knowledge at this point. They are finding hope and help in a refugee camp and trying to find their way and survive. That was very, very popular. The students loved it. We don't always see nonfiction doing terribly well once we get to middle school and up. They like it, but it's not usually what they select as their favorite. So, I was a little bit surprised, but very pleasantly surprised.”
(PM): “And then we'll finish off with the Lincoln Awardwhich is, again, the teen readers award. I was not super surprised by the winner here. Can you tell us about it a little bit?”
(NF): “The winner was ‘The Loop.’ It's the first book in a series. It's by Ben Oliver, and it is science fiction and suspense and dystopian sci-fi.”
(PM): “Oh, teen dystopia! Can we talk a little bit about 2024? What stood out to you about the ones that students will be voting on soon?”
(NF): “I have a very, very small school. So, my sample sizes for classes are literally like 12 kids. But once one book takes off with the right kid, and they go ‘Oh my gosh, this was great, you should read it!’ It takes off. I know that one of the ones that's been very popular for my middle school my Rebecca Caudill is the graphic novel ‘City of Dragons: The Awakening Storm.’ It's action-packed. It's very exciting. It's fantasy and dragons. Dragons are huge for every age group right now.
My Bluestem at my school, specifically, what's been really popular, we just started reading yesterday a book called ‘The Great Stink,’ and it's a nonfiction book about poop pollution in London. The kids are crazy about it! One: it's, of course, always funny anytime you have poop in a book, right?”
(PM): "You really can't miss with that."
(NF): “So, we're talking about the environment and engineering and how we use engineering and science to help solve our problems. That has been happening throughout time and continues to this day. Elementary kids for Monarch have loved literally everything we read. I never know what they're going to pick because they're all like ‘Smiley face! That's my favorite book we've read!’ and I'm like, ‘I know that's how I feel about them too!’ I don't know what I would pick. Sometimes, I think especially with the youngest ones, it's like which book have they read most recently ends up being their favorite.”
(PM): “Listen, we're all guilty of recency bias. I totally understand! I do really enjoy what you said about how, especially the middle school and with the teens that one student evangelist could push the other students into also reading and picking up and enjoying a book.”
(NF): “For sure, and at the big schools, especially, they have different promotional things they'll do. I know a lot of schools will have little lapel pins that people can put on their lanyards or their backpacks or whatever. You can kind of see which books are most popular by how many pins have been taken from each book. That's a really good metric.
I know that one book that broaches both Rebecca Caudill and the Lincoln this year is called ‘I Must Betray You’ by Ruta Sepetys. It's been huge. I mean, every single one of her books has been hugely popular. But that is historical fiction. It's set in Romania. It's recent history, but history we don't often get to in school, but the students are interested in it. It's the 1990s so, yes, that's historical fiction when it comes to teens!” *laughs*
(PM): “Oh, man!”
(NF): “I don't think we're far off from that being historical fiction for adults, honestly. But it is!”
(PM): “Oh, you mean the 1900s?!”
(NF): “Exactly!”
(PM): “When we're like thinking broadly about the past couple of years of nominees and award winners, have you been able to pick up on any themes?”
(NF): “Well, people started talking around 2020-2021 that like, ‘oh, are going to people want to read really light-hearted stuff? Really happy stuff to kind of escape?’ And we have found that, especially for middle school and teenagers, they want to dive deeper. They want to understand that difficulty, and they want to figure out how to get through it. Seeing books where teenagers are saving the world and getting through things and figuring out their feelings -- those are huge. Those are always, always popular for middle school and high school. There are light-hearted fun things in there too, but the things that resonate the most and that kind of stick with them are the things that dive deeper into the difficult things of life.”
Editor's Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
