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Young readers become shadow judges
Throughout Term 3, we had a number of students participate in the Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) Shadow Judging. This is a new initiative from the CBCA and involved the students becoming judges for the Younger Readers Shortlisted Books.
consider criteria such as literary merit, cohesiveness, quality, appeal and originality. The winning book according to the PLC Sydney Shadow Judges was Exit Through the Giftshop. The CBCA Shadow Judges winning book was Rabbit, Soldier, Angel, Thief and the CBCA Judges choice was A Glasshouse of Stars. As you can see the appeal of a book is subjective.
Students needed to commit to reading all six titles in the category and to then complete a creative submission to be uploaded onto the Shadow Judging site.
The students met once a week to discuss the books and to share their thoughts and opinions on the quality of the books and possible creative responses they could submit. This was also the opportunity to exchange their books for new ones. The group's commitment to reading the books was impressive as there were only about eight weeks to read all six titles. After reading the books the students needed to collaborate to come up with their creative submissions. For the Detective’s Guide to Ocean Travel the girls voted to make toffee as this was an important aspect of the story and key in determining who committed the crime of stealing the Saffron Diamond. The girls also created a model dragon with feeding instructions for Dragon Skin as in the book Pip found an unwell dragon she needed to nurse back to health. The group also created a boarding pass for Huda and Me as Akeal and Huda flew by themselves to Lebanon to find their parents to rescue their siblings from cruel Aunt Amal. We also had two creative submissions for Exit Through the Giftshop, one was a safety video about how to deal with online bullying and the other submission was a continuation of the story written in a similar format.
The Shadow Judges also needed to submit their vote for which book they felt was the best. They needed to We would like to congratulate all the students who participated in the shadow judging and for their commitment in reading the books and developing creative responses. The girls reported it was an enjoyable yet challenging experience. They found it challenging to read all the books in the time frame and to think of interesting creative responses but by far the hardest part was picking their favourite book. The more enjoyable aspects were meeting new people, eating the toffee and getting to read the shortlisted books before everyone else.
Ms Claire Elliot
Teacher Librarian, Junior School
