Information for Librarians

is a reading collaboration program between international Schools since 2016

We welcome any school interested in joining our collaborative effort.

Join by sending a message to lalemanw@isb.be

Iris Award Philosophy

The Iris program is an interschool collaboration between librarians / teachers at International Schools. These are our goals:

promoting reading for students k-12
collaborating on creating resources to run the program
having few common bookends so we allow for easy adaptation of the program to each school's specific circumstances

Interested?

We welcome all interested librarians or teachers.

If you want to know more about the program or join us, send an email to Wouter Laleman (lalemanw@isb.be).

Participation is free of charge.

We only ask that, if possible, you help share some of the effort of running the program, e.g. by recommending titles for next year's selection.

What does it mean to participate in the Iris Award?

Participating in the Iris Award means:

make at least one of the current year's selection of titles available to your students.
promote reading of these titles at your school. You may use the common resources we create if you like.
By May 31 you rank the titles in the categories you participate in order from most popular according to your students to least popular
Add your school's votes to our joint spreadsheet.

On June 1, all votes are tallied and the Iris Award winners for each category are announced.

How about the BookBowl?

If you are in for some friendly competition, you could join one of 3 Iris bookbowls : ES, MS or HS/Adult.

The Iris BookBowls are definitely what give the program that extra Zing! The bookbowls are designed with maximum flexibility in mind. You can easily adapt it to your specific circumstances and add a kicker fun reading event to your library schedule, even if you have very little time.

Just reach out to lalemanw@isb.be, who will gladly hop on a zoom with you to answer your questions.

You might be joining before you know it. Your students will thank you for doing so.

TITLE SELECTION step 1

Submitting titles for consideration before May 1

All participating librarians / teachers may suggest titles on a joint spreadsheet by May 1

In order to add a title

the person suggesting the title must have read the book

ELIGIBILITY RULES

the first English language publication date must be no more than 3 years before the date of the list. For example, books for Iris 26, must have a publication date in 2025, 2024 or 2023.
books may be part of a series if they are either number 1 in the series or if the order of reading doesn't matter

TITLE SELECTION step 2

The Selection Committee finalizes the selection by June 1

A Selection Committee will review the submitted list for eligibility and take a leadership role in finalizing the list the by June 1. The selection meeting date will be public, hybrid in person /online and everyone is invited to take part.

The selection committee members :

curate their subsection, have read or familiarized themselves thoroughly with all titles in the subsection
make sure that there is a healthy number of titles in their assigned subsection
assure that all suggested titles meet the eligibility criteria
assure that all titles are sourceable though major booksellers

When making the final selections, we will strive to find a balance between genres, geographical locations and cultural settings of the stories

Selection Committee Members

If you are interested in becoming a selection Committee Member, please write to lalemanw@isb.be

Selection Committee Members

Picture books - Nathalie Morrissey (International School of Amsterdam)

Elementary School Chapter Books

Cruising - Wouter Laleman (International School Brussels)
Flying - Alicia Baine (British School Brussels)
Warp - Helle Kirstein (International School of Amsterdam)

Middle School Novels

Cruising - Lauren Olson (Washington International School)
Flying - Jayne Bier (Rotterdam IS)
Warp - Anne Steadman (British School Brussels)

High School / Adult novels - Brandy Mowatt (Saint John's)

French Language - Christel Toilier (International School of Brussels)

German Language Andrea Haake (German Picture books), Roswitha Mehne (German novels)

Dutch Language - Wouter Laleman (International School of Brussels)

Costs

The Iris Award is a collaborative program.
By pooling our efforts we make something happen for our student readers that none of us could achieve alone.

There are no fees or joining costs other than your library purchasing the titles on the list to make them available to your readers.

Join us !

We will be happy

to welcome you and

your students.