Multiple book awards were announced, FlipGrid is getting ready for another student voice bus tour, and Follett has launched a new learning platform—all in this edition of NewBites.

Anna Dewdney Read Together Award

Penguin Young Readers, the Children’s Book Council, and Every Child a Reader announced that The Rabbit Listened, written and illustrated by Cori Doerrfeld, is the winner of the third annual Anna Dewdney Read Together Award.

The award is given annually to a picture book that is “both a superb read-aloud and also sparks compassion, empathy, and connection.” It commemorates the life and work of “Llama Llama” creator Dewdney and celebrates her commitment to reading with young children.

The Dewdney Read Together Honor Books are: Drawn Together by Minh Lê; illus. by Dan Santat; Dreamers, by Yuyi Morales;I Am Enough by Grace Byers; illus. by Keturah A. Bobo; Julián is a Mermaid by Jessica Love; and Thank You, Omu! by Oga Mora.

Doerrfeld will receive $1,000 from the Children’s Book Council, and Penguin will purchase and donate 250 copies of The Rabbit Listened to the school, library, or literacy organization of her choice.

The Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) announced the winners of the 2018 On-The-Verge Emerging Voices award for unpublished manuscripts, part of the SCBWI’s ongoing effort to foster diverse and underrepresented voices in children’s publishing.

Amira Kunbargi won for When A Girl Dreams: The True Story of Fatimah Al-Fihri, Founder of the World’s Oldest University, a nonfiction picture book about a woman who changed the face of education in 9th century Morocco; and medina was the second winner for The One Who Loves You The Most, an #ownvoices middle grade novel about a 12-year-old Latinx adoptee who begins exploring their gender and embracing a queer identity.

The winning manuscripts will be made available to select agents and editors via a secure website.

Kunbargi and medina will also receive an all-expense paid trip to the 2019 SCBWI Summer Conference in Los Angeles to meet editors, agents, and other industry professionals.

The On-The-Verge Emerging Voices Award is made possible through the generosity of Sue and Martin Schmitt of the 455 Foundation.

Green Earth Book Awards

The Green Earth Book Awards began in 2005 as the nation’s first environmental stewardship book prize for childrens and young adult books.

The 2019 Green Earth Book Award winners are:

Picture Book: The Brilliant Deep: Rebuilding the World’s Coral Reefs: The Story of Ken Nedimyer and the Coral Restoration Foundation by Kate Messner, illus. by Matthew Forsythe

Children’s Fiction: The Flooded Earth by Mardi McConnochie

Children’s Nonfiction: Trash Revolution: Breaking the Waste Cycle by Erica Fyvie, illus. by Bill Slavin

Young Adult Fiction: Dry, by Neal Shusterman and Jarrod Shusterman, illus. by Jay Shaw

The honor books are:

Picture Book: Counting Birds by Heidi E. Y. Stemple, illus. by Clover Robin and Salamander Sky by Katy Farber and Meg Sodano.

Children’s Fiction: Ellie’s Strand: Exploring the Edge of the Pacific, by M.L. Herring and Judith L. Li, illustrated by M.L. Herring

Children’s Nonfiction: Bat Citizens, by Rob Laidlaw

This year, the #FlipGridBusTour leaves its Minneapolis office to promote Student Voice through America’s Heartland, making stops in Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana, before hitting western Pennsylvania and New York. They finish in Toronto.

One of the stops is Van Meter Community School in Van Meter, IA, where teacher librarian Shannon McClintock Miller is excited to use the visit as a celebration of her students’ accomplishments at the end of the school year. FlipGrid is one of the ways Miller finds her students use technology to amplify their voice.

“It’s such a seamless way for any teacher to advocate for kids to use their voice to say what they’ve learned, what they’re passionate about, to say what the things they love or want to do in the future,” she says. “I’ve seen kids who hate talking in front of the class get on FlipGrid and talk for five minutes. It helps kids. This isn’t just FlipGrid, I see with all the tools we use—asking questions to an author on Skype, getting up and presenting a project on Storyboard, whatever it may be.

“With FlipGrid, I think we level the playing field and give them all the equal opportunity to share their voice, to share the things they’re learning, they’re passionate about, the things they like and dislike and bring it into one platform that’s totally free for everybody.”

Follett has launched MyDestiny, a new learning platform that combines a library of ebooks and Open Educational Resources (OERs) with built-in artificial intelligence “to help teachers find quality, standards-aligned resources and to guide students on their learning path from discovery to mastery.”

MyDestiny meets students at their level in real time with access to more than 40,000 ebooks from a variety of publishers and more than 750,000 high-quality OERs. MyDestiny leverages machine-learning capabilities to allow users to easily locate recommended content, all aligned to national and individual state standards,” according to Follett, which says the platform will allow educators to align content to standards, identify student achievement gaps, track student growth, and comprehension, respond quickly to students’ immediate needs, and receive support and access to professional development opportunities.