Correll Book Award Winners Announced
Winners of the third Correll Book Award for Excellence in Early Childhood Informational Text were announced at the Correll Early Literacy Conference in April.
Children’s book author and illustrator Ted Lewin won the award for the birth to 3-year-old category for his book, “Look!” Wildlife photographer Ingo Arndt was named the winner in the 4- to 8-year-old category for “Best Foot Forward: Exploring Feet, Flippers, and Claws.”
Also, for the first time, three honors books were announced: “One Gorilla: A Counting Book” by Anthony Browne, “Woodpecker” by Dee Phillips and “Bats Biggest! Littlest!” by Sandra Markle.
The national award was created in 2012 through the University of Maine’s College of Education and Human Development to draw attention to the need for quality informational text for young children. The seven-person committee considers informational texts published in the United States in the last calendar year. The winning books are chosen as exemplars of the genre, appropriate for the age group, engaging for young children and sources of accurate information, according to Susan Bennett-Armistead, Correll Professor of Early Literacy at UMaine.
Past award winners include Gail Gibbons for “Gorillas” and Melissa Stewart for “A Place for Bats.”