Back in June of 2022 I wrapped up one-year of service on the 2022 Coretta Scott King Book Awards Jury. We were tasked with the responsibility of reading through children’s books published in 2021, for ages 0-18, that were written or illustrated by Black creators. The purpose of the award is to highlight books that “reflect the Black experience.” As any Black person knows, that is a difficult task, as there is no one “Black experience.” This is something we had to discuss time and time again as we broke down every book that made it to our final discussion list.

If I’m to be honest, for most of 2021 I struggled with making sure I gave my full time and attention to this award. Life doesn’t stop just because you’re on a book committee! Anyone who has served on a book committee knows how much work it takes to read, review and judge books for the purpose of an award. It was no easy task reading everything from baby board books to Young Adult literature. I was confident in my ability to review, evaluate and clearly discuss books, though. I know kids books. I understand the complex interplay between quality illustration and text. But the challenge for me was time management; I wanted to give each book a fair shake. For anyone looking to join a book awards committee, especially one for ALA, find comfort in the fact that you have your committee to fall back on. There’s a reason why we give feedback, share thoughts, deliberate and discuss. Life is bound to get in the way of reading and sometimes you just can’t give your all to every book. That’s why you have other people to fill in the gaps. I’m so grateful for my committee. We did the damn thing. We poured our hearts into our discussion and chose our winners with care, consideration and pride.

I’ve done this book-deliberation-thing twice now, in two very different ways, and there are pros and cons to both. If you look back through this blog, you’ll see that I was on the 2020 Caldecott Committee. For that process, since it was before COVID shutdowns, deliberation was done the old way, in person, in a big room where we were sequestered for an entire weekend. Because my committee experience for CSK (Coretta Scott King) was well into the COVID 19 pandemic, we shifted to a new virtual deliberation model. In January 2022, just a few weeks before the virtual Midwinter Conference, our committee “met” via Zoom for several days. There was lots of talking, laughing, reflecting, snacking and stretch-breaks. In some ways it mimicked the in-person deliberation experience (both were exhausting) and in other ways it was completely foreign. For example, we couldn’t pass the books around the table like we did with Caldecott. We weren’t able to go out and get lunch and dinner together. We had to have all our books ready at our tables/desks to pull out when discussion time was ready. By the way, major kudos to our Jury Chair Jason Driver for leading us through the virtual deliberation format with grace and ease. We were all so tired but also deeply energized by the end as we looked at our slate with pride and joy.

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