Week 20 and Texas Bluebonnet Award

As I have mentioned a few times, our 3rd and 4th graders participate in the Texas Bluebonnet reading program. Every year twenty books are chosen as the "Texas Bluebonnet Award Master List" by the Bluebonnet selection committee. Then if students read a minimum of five books out of the twenty they can vote for their favorite title during the month of January each year. The author of the book receiving the most votes statewide is declared the winner of the Texas Bluebonnet Award.

So this year our kids read the Bluebonnet books like crazy. All twenty of the books were fabulous, so it was understandable. However, we also challenged all of the classes to see which 3rd and 4th grade classes could read the most Bluebonnets. We told them to record books as they read them, and in the end the two classes that read the most would get a special surprise. They were so excited!

So this past January we had 52 3rd and 4th graders vote. Voting ended on January 31st and the winning Bluebonnet book was supposed to be announced soon after. However, it kept being postponed due to other schools in Texas not being finished with voting because of inclement weather days.  It got to where the kids were really frustrated with me in thinking that I was just trying to torture them by not telling them who the winning book was, but I assured them that I was getting frustrated too! However, the winner was finally announced on February 19th, so I couldn't wait to make the big announcement to all of our kids at our Monday morning assembly this past week.

At the assembly I started off by reminding the students that we were not the only ones who voted. Actually, 181,734 students across Texas voted. That is a lot of kids! So with 28,398 votes the 2014 Texas Bluebonnet Award winning book is:

Ten Rules You Absolutely Must Not Break If you Want to Survive the School Bus By John Grandits    

Here I am showing the cover. 

I will say our kids were pretty shocked by the winner. Not many had read the book since it was one of the picture books. I think they got more wrapped up with the chapter books which is great, but this one just got a little over looked. Either way they still cheered loud and since then I have been sharing it with all of the classes and they really like it. I read it to a 4th grade class last week, and after I was done reading it someone said "well now I get why that book won."  

I then went on to announce the second and third place books as I know our kids would be curious to know. 

In second place with 21,662 votes and also the book that was most voted for by our students at Greenhill was:

Wonder by R.J. Palacio   

This got a really big applause! What a super book this is! The kids were really curious to know what book I would have voted for if I was voting and I told them that this would have been it. 

Finally in third place with 19,352 votes was:

Giants Beware by Jorge Aguirre

I then announced the 3rd and 4th graders that won the book contest for reading the most Bluebonnets. In 3rd grade the class that won read a total of 54 Bluebonnet books and in 4th grade the winning class read 83 books. That is a lot of great reading! Their prize was that they got to have a celebration in the library. 

On their celebration day when they entered we had them walk the "red carpet" or should I say the "read carpet?" Ha! Then in the background we had the song "We are the Champions" playing.  It was a nice touch. :)        

The "red carpet"

Then we had a little awards ceremony. We gave out prizes to the top readers and then we drew names out of a hat for the kids to have a chance to win some fun coupons and prizes. 

After the awards ceremony the kids enjoyed some popcorn and played some board games. 

4th graders playing. 

3rd graders playing.

The kids had a blast. I had several come up to me after school last week to say that they had the best time at the party, and that made me so happy. They sure earned it! Hopefully this will inspire the kids to read even more next year.