While some folks do NaNoWriMo in November, at my K-4 elementary school we prefer MoCal – which is a cool abbreviation for Mock Caldecott.

We’ve fine tuned it over the years, and this is the system that’s been working.

Part 1

• Introduce Caldecott Medal/Honor. Explain that it is an award for illustrations. I would encourage you to fight your librarian tendencies to make it super formal. I’ve found formality can take the fun out of it.
• Explain that we will read some books that might win this year and vote for our favorite. They call this a Mock Caldecott
• Watch the announcement from last year.
• Read/discuss a previous winner or a new contender (for previous winners, I like This Is Not My Hat – kids love it and the illustrations make for good discussion). Discuss (in very basic terms) the Caldecott criteria.

Part 2

• Read/discuss two Caldecott contenders each week, and have students vote for which one they think is stronger. Reading two back to back is nice because students can make a comparison. These days I have an informal show of hands vote for the favorite of that week, but we’ve also done an online vote via Google Forms – that’s fun too.

Part 3

• After reviewing the basic Caldecott criteria, students vote for the book they think is most deserving of Caldecott. We use a ballot with pictures of all of the books. Students circle their top pick.

Part 4

• Tally the votes time. The book with the most votes wins our Mock Caldecott Medal. The next highest group of vote getters receives Caldecott Honors. I announce the winners to each class.
• When the official Caldecott winners are announced, I watch the webcast with students. This part is so fun, especially if one of their picks end up with an award.

Here are the books we’ll be reading and discussing for our 2018 Mock Caldecott:

How do you Mock Caldecott? Leave advice in the comments.