Winners of the 2019 Comstock-Gág Read Aloud Books Awards announced
For the fifteenth year, children have chosen the best read aloud picture books in Minnesota State University Moorhead’s Comstock-Gág Read Aloud Book Awards program.
A humorous, interactive book with an owl narrator is the winner of the 2019 Wanda Gág Read Aloud Book Award. Don’t Blink was written by Amy Krouse Rosenthal and illustrated by David Roberts.
Two titles were named as Wanda Gág Honor books. Blue written and illustrated by Laura Vaccaro Seeger is a poignant story of the relationship between a boy and his dog as the boy grows from a child to a man. The second honor book is We Don’t Eat Our Classmates written and illustrated by Ryan T. Higgins. This humorous story features a young T-Rex, Penelope, who learns that to make friends you should not eat your classmates.
The 2019 winner of the Comstock Read Aloud Book Award is Adrian Simcox Does NOT Have a Horse written by Marcy Campbell and illustrated by Corinna Luyken. The striking illustrations in the book highlight an imaginative story of friendship and acceptance.
The Comstock Honor Book, The Day War Came by Nicola Davies and illustrated by Rebecca Cobb, is a timely story of the struggles of a young refugee girl and the kindness she experiences from other children in her new home.
Twenty-one regional teachers and librarians, along with 160 MSUM students read aloud over 200 picture books to over 23,000 children during the year. The winners and honor books are determined after the Comstock-Gág Read Aloud Book Awards Committee examines feedback from readers, which includes responses from children to each of the books. The purpose of the program is to increase literacy, promote reading aloud to children, and to recognize outstanding authors and illustrators each year. A total of 307,683 children have participated in the Comstock-Gág Read Aloud Book Awards program since its inception in 2005. After the award books are selected, a large number of books are donated to area libraries, schools, and nonprofits, with over 12,000 picture books donated to date.
The awards program is administered by the staff of the MSUM Livingston Lord Library’s CMC, which holds a large collection of children’s books and resource materials for in-service teachers. The book awards project is partially funded by the Solomon G. Comstock Memorial Fund of the Minneapolis Foundation and the Wanda Gág Book Award Fund of the MSUM Alumni Foundation.
For more information, contact:
Pam Werre, CMC Librarian/Comstock-Gág Read Aloud Book Awards Committee Chair
Livingston Lord Library
Minnesota State University Moorhead
1104 Seventh Avenue South
Moorhead, MN 56563
Email: werrepa@mnstate.edu
Website: mnstate.edu/cmc