Carl Hiaasen Nabs Dorothy Canfield Fisher Children’s Book Award

By SLJ Staff -- School Library Journal, 7/27/2007

A picture book about prairie dogs abuzz over an intruding fuzzy object, a YA novel about a 13-year-old's family dilemma, and a Carl Hiaasen selection about a teen's mission to clean up his community are the winners of the 2007 Vermont Department of Libraries' three student-selected book awards.

Walking off with the Dorothy Canfield Fisher Award—the second oldest child-selected award in the country—is Hiassen for Flush (Knopf, 2005). Children in grades 4 to 8 are the judges for this 50-year-old award, chosen from a pre-selected list of 30 titles, and designed to help children become the "enthusiastic and discriminating readers" namesake Dorothy Canfield Fisher—the beloved Vermont author—would have wished for.

Janet Stevens and Susan Stevens Crummel are winners of the eleventh Red Clover Award for picture books, for The Great Fuzz Frenzy (Harcourt, 2005). The award is co-sponsored by the Vermont Center for the Book, the Vermont Department of Libraries, the Vermont Department of Education, and Windham County Reads. Children in kindergarten through grade 4 are the judges.

Jodi Picoult's My Sister's Keeper (Washington Square Press, 2005) wins the Green Mountain Book Award, created in 2005 by the Vermont Department of Libraries, the Vermont Library Association, and the Vermont Educational Media Association to promote leisure reading and good literature for high school students.

Candidate books for the awards are often more than a year old due to the lengthy time frame of the school selection process.