#alayma

The alarm went off at 5:30.  The day I've been waiting for for months, a whole year, actually, finally arrived.

I picked up the cake at 7 am and it had a spelling error!  Anyone who was at ALA in San Francisco will chuckle since it's the same error that was on our direction signs to the Newbery/Caldecott banquet.

Can you spy the typo???

Then it was time to get the live stream on and going!  It went without a hitch.  I was excited for the Coretta Scott King awards! Our friend Bryan Collier won the Illustrator award for Trombone Shorty!
Jason Reynolds also racked up a couple of Coretta Scott King awards.  I need to get past my "fifth grade reading level" and read his books.

You need to hear this guy speak! He is SO inspiring!

I was leaping then because I loved Trombone Shorty so much and Bryan is such a great guy!

We were so happy to hear (all puns intended! ha!) that the Odyssey honor went to Echo and the award went to The War that Saved My Life.  I listened to Echo and could not press pause for anything.

My Geisel Committee was a tad disappointed.  They were dressed up like pigs.  They honed in their grammar skills because they loved Cece Bell's I Yam a Donkey so much and yet it was still exciting for me.  Never having done a Geisel project before, I was happy that the books they chose were ones that were on my list and that we had even read aloud.  I enjoyed Jonathan Fenske's book.  I distinctly remember laughing out loud when reading about that tricky fox.  I can also see how Don't Throw it to Mo could win especially since it has a clear beginning, middle and end. Many of our kids really did like it.  

Here's the Geisel Committee holding the winning books.

I love that Sophie Blackall won the Caldecott medal.  She was super cool when I met her back in November at the AASL conference.  Of course, we all wanted Float to get a sticker. It can still be distinguished in our minds, especially since Daniel Miyares has a new book coming out with Kwame next month!

Needless to say, we were all surprised with the Newbery outcome.  I'm really going to have to look at things differently next year when I devise my list.  Mrs. Yager's third graders focused their Olympic project on Last Stop on Market Street (yay for Christian Robinson, too!) so we have all these pictures from Thursday and today.  Congratulations, Matt de la Pena!  We should all try and take a bus to Orlando to celebrate you in June!

How cool is this that we already have a SIGNED copy of the Newbery winning book in our library

Here's the class today after Mrs. Yager put the Newbery gold on their flag.

The inside of their book, Last Stop at CES!

Mrs. Yager explaining to Chris about their project based on Last Stop on Market Street.

It was cool when Chris told the class that Matt de la Pena was "his friend."

Our principal in front of Mrs. Yager's class flag and our copies of the Newbery winning book.  I love how they wrote all the many themes of the book on the side of the flag.

We were VERY happy that The War that Saved My Life, Echo and Roller Girl all won honors!  Hooray!  All three of those books were book groups, too!

I'm so happy for Kimberly Brubaker Bradley! We all loved this book so much!

Hooray for Roller Girl!

And of course, Echo!

Yes! It was an exciting day!  I was so glad to watch the awards with my students.  The 4th graders who did the Sibert Smackdown were a little disappointed that none of their books won.  But they learned a lot and that's the important thing! There are a lot of good books out there!

A glimpse of all of us watching the awards.

What a great day! See you in Orlando!