Kids Choice: The Best Read-Aloud of the Year
Thanks to hundreds of wonderful teachers and librarians, nearly ten thousand first- and second-graders voted on four finalists for the Irma Black Award and they chose How Rocket Learned to Read by Tad Hills (Schwartz & Wade).
That so many of you read the finalists aloud to your students, led them in discussions, and encouraged them to vote, attests to the importance of the picture book format in supporting the development of critical thinking skills. As one of my second grade students put it, “Rocket should be the Irma Black winner because it tells the truth. You can’t learn to read in a day. It takes time. A lot of time. You can tell from the pictures; it takes seasons.”
Not only that, Rocket is a joy to read aloud, again and again.
Let the celebrating begin! Please join us:
May 19, 2011
Bank Street College of Education
610 West 112th Street
New York City
8:30 AM Light Breakfast | 9:00 AM Award Ceremony | 10:00 AM Book Signing
To RSVP or to make a contribution to the Irma S. and James H. Black Fund at Bank Street College of Education, please email Alesia Yezerskaya, or phone 212-875-4608.
Keynote Speaker: Perri Klass is a pediatrician who writes both fiction and non-fiction. She writes about children and families, about medicine, about food and travel, and about knitting. Her newest book is a novel, The Mercy Rule, and the book before that was a work of non-fiction, Treatment Kind and Fair: Letters to a Young Doctor, written in the form of letters to her son as he starts medical school.
Perri lives in New York City, where she is Professor of Journalism and Pediatrics at New York University. She is also Medical Director of Reach Out and Read, a national literacy organization which works through doctors and nurses to promote parents reading aloud to young children.