WAW Award Winners Announced
For the year 2007
September 29, 2007
The Report Card by Andrew Clements and So B. It by Sara Weeks are the newest winners of the William Allen White Children’s Book Award. The Report Card was selected by Kansas readers in grades third through fifth, and So B. It received the highest number of votes in grades sixth through eighth.
An awards ceremony to personally honor and present the awards to these designated authors occurred Saturday, September 29, at William Lindsay White Auditorium in Emporia. A full day of activities ranging from author autographs to face painting to story telling was held prior to the awards ceremony.
For Andrew Clements, this is his third White Award, having won in 1999 for Frindle, and in 2002 for The Landry News. His latest winner, The Report Card, is about a young genius named Nora who hides her intelligence so she won’t be singled out. Only the school librarian realizes the truth: that Nora is determined to prove that test scores have nothing to do with intelligence.
So B. It by Sarah Weeks is about Heidi, whose mother is mentally handicapped and possesses a vocabulary of only 23 words. Her mother’s life is a mystery, right down to her real name. When she was first asked her name by a neighbor, Heide's mother simply replied, “so be it.” But when Heide finds some old Christmas photos from Liberty, New York she decides to go there in order to finally piece together her mother's mysterious past.
More than 60,000 Kansas boys and girls in the third through eighth grades participated in the voting for this year’s awards. Awards are chosen each year by Kansas school children from a master list of books.
The White Awards Program, which is the nation’s first statewide reader’s choice award, is directed by Emporia State University and is supported by the Trusler Foundation.
Since 1952, more than 3,700,000 votes have been cast by the children of Kansas to select the annual winners of the William Allen White Children’s Book Award.
