So things are pretty low key this weekend. John and I tried going out for a winter walk, but despite the warm-up it's slippy and icy, so we're not even going to do that.

I'm sitting here instead reading Silver Birch books. The Silver Birch Award is a special honour given to Canadian writers of children's books. Ten fiction and ten non-fiction books are picked each year in different age categories to compete for the awards. The Silver Birch award goes to books geared to students in Grade 4 to 6. What makes the award special is that students themselves cast the final vote on the awards. Each year our school has a Silver Birch club run by our librarian where students get the chance to read the Silver Birch nominees for the year. They are encouraged to read all ten books and they must read at least five to be eligible to vote in April.

Each student is given a passport and as they finish a book they must go talk to the Silver Birch judge for that book (a teacher who has read the book). The teacher will ask them a few questions to guarantee they have read the book and then they will sign their passport. So I picked two of the Gr. 5-6 non-fiction books on topics that interest me- "Draw Out The Story: Ten Secrets to Creating Your Own Comics" and "Learn to Speak Film: A Guide to Creating, Promoting and Screening Your Movies" to judge this year.

Just finished the comic one and I'll be settling in to read the film one tomorrow. It is cool how in this age of web comics and You Tube how relevant these topics can be to creative kids this age.

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