A book award that I am very proud of is The Dulwich Information Book Award (DIBAS) that was created in 2016 by the library staff from the various International Dulwich Colleges. The idea came about at a conference we hosted at Dulwich College (Singapore) when one of our teacher librarians, Patricia Chandler, suggested we create a book award across the College network. Many of us had been involved in book awards that focussed mostly on fiction, including the Red Dot Book Awards and we decided to focus this award on information books.  The ongoing aim is to highlight good quality non-fiction books in both English and Mandarin and promote them across our schools. The intention of the award is to encourage a wider reading of non-fiction and provide a focus for critical evaluation of content and design. In 2017 we launched our first selection and we are currently in the process of shortlisting for our fourth year. The DIBAS has been very popular with students and staff at Dulwich College (Singapore) and has kept the library staff busy in looking for excellent examples of non-fiction. The result of this has been a high interest in these titles by students and teachers and a focus of teaching and learning about the different types of non-fiction. At the end of the article, I have included all shortlisted and winning titles

Dulwich Information Book Award Information

• The award runs across 3 age ranges (DUCKS 2-7 years, Junior 7-11 years and Senior 12-18 years)
• Mandarin and English books can be selected
• Non-fiction to tie-in with National-Non-fiction November
• 6 titles maximum shortlisted in each age range

Criteria for choosing books

• Must be able to view prior to (from libraries, bookshops and so on) or we will need to ask a recommender to submit a book
• Excludes textbooks
• Aesthetics (including design, style, and integration of text and graphics in the book)
• Accurate and up-to-date
• Age-appropriate
• Appropriate for Second Language
• Available from our suppliers
• ISBN and authenticity verified
• Published in the last 3 years
• Nominations not accepted from publishers

Book Award Timeline

• Appeal for longlist to DCI teachers/staff/librarians/students/parents – nominations requested in April
• Shortlisting early May by teacher librarians, students and teachers in all participating Colleges
• Introduction of books and related activities from mid-September
• Students and staff vote and results announced across the Dulwich network in Non-Fiction November
• Authors notified if their book wins

Our longlist for the 2020 award is here and we welcome additions. This will close at the end of April.

Shortlists from Previous Years

Behind the Books: The Non-fiction Family Tree

Melissa Stewart, an award-winning author of more than 180 non-fiction books for children, has developed a Non-fiction Family Tree in an effort to understand the various kinds of non- fiction and the interplay among them. We use these categories to choose a diverse range of information books. From my point of view as the Junior School (year 3-6) teacher librarian I also use this with my year 5’s and 6’s when I teach them about the different kinds of non-fiction. Also, when shortlisting we try to include a diverse range of topics and select information books from a variety of topics. I often include teaching about the Dewey Decimal Number for the book and then highlight similar titles from that area of Dewey. For example last year I was very keen to include an art book and worked closely with the art teacher to add a selection of art books to the long list.

My personal experience and reflections

Gill (2009) discusses that no other genre of children’s literature has changed as radically in recent years as nonfiction and McNeill (2015) shares an interesting article about the trends in non-fiction for young readers here. What I have enjoyed most in the shortlisting process is enjoying the incredible non-fiction titles that are published today, which are very different to traditional non-fiction books where each title had a similar format. They usually had a contents page, index and glossary and each page would include a subheading, text boxes, photographs and chunks of facts. Whilst these books are still very useful the design of a lot of current non-fiction is very different and can include contemporary illustration and design. There are many titles now that appear to cross over between fiction and non-fiction and are produced to look more like a picture book, even if they include real stories or facts.  Morris (2013) discusses these ‘hybrid’ books and poses the question, where should they be located in a library? In my library, we have recently genrefied our picture book area and two of the included genres are narrative non-fiction and information picture books.

My recent reading for ETL402 has included reading about literary non-fiction which can also be called creative non-fiction, faction or narrative non-fiction. This format of non-fiction uses literacy techniques usually associated with fiction to report on people, places and events and often includes biographies. Damaso (2011) includes more explanation here. The increase in narrative nonfiction and the popularity of this genre has been huge in my library. In fact, for the first two years the winners in the Junior School were narrative non-fiction titles. These stories are also excellent resources for embedding literacy learning into the curriculum.

And the Winners are…

My Top 5 for Junior School students (7-11 year olds)

• The Great Fire of London (beautifully designed and illustrated and well written narrative non-fiction)
• Finding Winnie, The True Story of the World’s Most Famous Bear (wonderful narrative non-fiction with 3 stories combined in one).
• We Travel So Far, stunningly illustrated book about animal migrations
• If, A Mind-Bending New Way of Looking at Big Ideas and Numbers (brilliant for talking about big number concepts and infographics)
• The Unworry book (this one surprised me enormously in its popularity and is perhaps an interesting reflection on the busy lives some of our students live and the worries and anxiety that brings. It is a great example of active non-fiction and gives lots of activities and ideas to copy with worry)

Other non- fiction book awards

• https://www.sla.org.uk/information-book-award
• Eve Pownell Award category in the CBCA awards https://www.cbca.org.au/shortlist-2020
• https://www.booktrust.org.uk/what-we-do/awards-and-prizes/current-prizes/blue-peter-book-awards/
• https://www.booktrust.org.uk/what-we-do/awards-and-prizes/prizes-archive/booktrust-best-book-awards/
• http://www.ala.org/yalsa/nonfiction-award
• http://www.ala.org/alsc/awardsgrants/bookmedia/sibertmedal
• http://www.eacl.org.au/2019-shortlist/

References

Damaso, J. (2011). Elements of creative nonfiction [Slideshare]. Retrieved from https://www.slideshare.net/damaso2/elements-of-creative-non-fiction

Gill, S. R. (2009). What Teachers Need to Know About the “New” Nonfiction. Reading Teacher, 63(4), 260–267. https://doi-org.ezproxy.csu.edu.au/10.1598/RT.63.4.1

McNeill, S. (2015, October). Moment of truth: Trends in nonfiction for young readers. Retrieved from http://authornews.penguinrandomhouse.com/moment-of-truth-trends-in-nonfiction-for-young-readers/

Morris, R. J. (2013). Linking learning and literary nonfiction. School Library Monthly, 29(7), 39-40. Retrieved from https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.csu.edu.au/docview/1492222115?accountid=10344

Stewart, M. (2007, December 13). The 5 kinds of nonfiction [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://celebratescience.blogspot.com/2017/12/ behind-books-nonfiction-family-tree.html