Your Favorite Book Isn’t On the Top 100 Chapter Books List
I mean, it would have been, but you didn’t vote for it. You never sent me your Top 10 Middle Grade (Fictional) Chapter Book list and now look. It’s nowhere to be seen. Such a pity.
But wait! There may yet be time. Just read these instructions and send me what you have and I guarantee your books will have a much better fighting chance. But hurry! Time is running out. The deadline is January 31st, with the beginning of the results (heavens above) posting February 1st. And trust me, it is a tight race in some places.
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Can’t wait to see what you love.
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About Betsy Bird
Betsy Bird is currently the Collection Development Manager of the Evanston Public Library system and a former Materials Specialist for New York Public Library. She has served on Newbery, written for Horn Book, and has done other lovely little things that she'd love to tell you about but that she's sure you'd find more interesting to hear of in person. Her opinions are her own and do not reflect those of EPL, SLJ, or any of the other acronyms you might be able to name. Follow her on Twitter: @fuseeight.
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So excited! Still rereading my favorites to lock down my top 10, I figure if I don’t like it enough to reread it this month then it gets knocked off my list (a good litmus test).
So many questions other than which titles make the top ten.
Looking back at last years poll, 34% of the top 100 earned some sort of ALA award. Will chapter books go higher or lower?
The most represented decade in the picture book poll was the 1980s with 19 titles, which decade shows up the most this time around?
In the picture book poll, the most represented creator was Maurice Sendak with 4 titles, does any author top this number?
Only 7 picture books prior to 1940 made that list, how many pre-1940 or even pre-1900 chapter books make this list?
Harper (if you include Greenwillow) had almost twice as many titles make the picture book list as any other publisher, will any publisher dominate this year’s poll?
Of the ~8250 possible points only 4721 were accounted for
in the top 100, 57%. Will this year’s voting be as variegated?
I have about four more books to read before I vote.
Eric, my man, I think we need to set up something where I regularly either link to you or print your findings verbatim, since you do such a marvelous job of tallying the results and putting them in contest.
The real difference between this poll and the picture book one, as I see it, is series. They throw everything off. You’ll see what I mean very soon.
Ack! Thanks for the reminder. I need to trim my list.
I suspect series will indeed throw things off. I limited myself to only one book per series & picked the first one as representing the whole series for my top ten, but there are certainly series where the first title is not the best. I also fought with myself over how many personal faves to include. Hope you gets loads more votes.
I sent mine in too early and found a HUGE glaring omission. Other than that I still feel pretty good about my list. I am not sure what this omission would have knocked off, but it needs to be on there somewhere!
I hope the daughter sent in her list- I know she wrote it up. It was interesting to see where our lists converged and where they did not. I think we had only two that overlapped. What also was interesting to me- her “favorite” author (Tamora Pierce) was not represented on the list. Go figure.
And I forgot to add how much I am looking forward to this. I predict that I will have 4 books (at most) that will appear on the final list.
I can’t wait to read all the posts, one by one . . . and so much suspense as to what will be on the list and what won’t. What a gift, Fuse. Thank you.
Eric, I love reading the stats. I’m guessing there will be a decent number of older books on the list, since classic chapter books seems to skew much older than classic picture books.
It will be interesting to see if you get a much bigger response. I confess I started avidly following your blog when the results were coming in from the Picture Book Poll (and have stayed around). So I am going to be SURE to enter this one. I wonder how many others there are like that.
I too starting following you after the Picture Book Poll and have stuck around. 🙂 I sent in my votes this morning, and all throughout my day I kept thinking of titles I’d forgotten. Oh, bother.