Guessing who will win at the ALA Youth Media Awards every January is a favorite pastime of school and children's librarians. Even more fun is getting young readers involved! Sonja Somerville, Teen Services Senior Librarian at Salem Public Library, hosted Oregon's Mock Printz with teens and librarians from across Oregon (Salem, Forest Grove, Gold Beach, Cedar Mill, and Bend to be exact). In this Q&A, she shares how it works and how school librarians could host or partner with their public library to make this work.
About the Mock Printz
The annual Mock Printz is an activity run by the Oregon Young Adult Network (OYAN), which is the division of the Oregon Library Association for library workers who serve middle and high school students. The Mock Printz is our attempt to guess the closely held secret of which outstanding young adult book will win the Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature. We are hardly ever right or even close to right, but in 2023 – we nailed it! Everyone (Oregon library workers, Oregon teens, and the actual Printz Committee) agreed that All My Rage by Sabaa Tahir was worthy of this recognition.
What does it take for a book to make the Top 8 for the Mock Printz at your library?
The process of choosing the Top 8 might be the most difficult part of planning the annual OYAN Mock Printz. We start by asking for people to make suggestions at an OYAN meeting. Then, there is a committee of OYAN members who volunteer to add to the list. We check lists and posts by other people nationally who are watching the Printz Committee. We check for lists of books that received lots of starred reviews. Getting starred reviews is not a requirement to win the Printz Award, but historically, Printz Award-winning books have received a lot of critical acclaims. Armed with the long list (40-50 possible books), the committee gets together and just talks it out. For the sake of making reading for the event varied and interesting, we try to think about a variety of categories and genres (fiction, nonfiction, graphic novels, realistic, fantasy, and science fiction). Mostly, though, we try to find books we could believe in as potential Printz honorees.
When do you start the program (i.e. how many weeks does everyone have to read)?
As with most volunteer-run endeavors, our ambitions do not always match reality. Our goal is to start this process in mid-summer and to have at least half of the Mock Printz books chosen and announced by sometime in September. Often, September looks more like October before we succeed. So, I would say fall. Fall is when we release the list and start encouraging people to read the books and consider participating in the Mock Printz event. The Mock Printz event always happens on a Saturday in mid-January – ideally about 1-2 weeks before the actual award winners are announced by the American Library Association.
Do teens sign up? How are your teen judges recruited?
Mock Printz is open to all teens and to anyone in Oregon who works with teens in a library setting. As the current coordinator, I push hard to get that teen involvement. It took me a few years to get the first small group of teens from Salem interested in coming with me to this event. It is very much a niche interest. Not even all bookworms would enjoy it, but for the right teen – someone who reads widely and who loves to really dig in and talk seriously about books – it is the Most Magical Day of All. It is amazing to get together with that small group of like-minded teens from your own town, but even MORE amazing to arrive and connect with other teens from other communities!
Another thought shared by a recent teen participant is that there is tremendous affirmation and power in coming to a space where adults listen carefully to you and take seriously what you have to say.
I'm so intrigued about the afternoon of discussion and debate! How did the teens handle it? How about the adults? How did you all structure the debate and voting?
The most amazing thing about the afternoon is how quickly it goes by. People come thinking, “4-5 hours? Really? Whatever shall we do?” The answer is this: We break into small groups and dig into each book for about 9-10 minutes of wild, intense discussion. We use discussion rules that emphasize listening openly, sharing respectfully, and starting each discussion with the positives.
During the second half of the workshop, the group comes together as a large group to compare notes and really advocate for our favorites for another couple of hours. It never feels like enough time. We say so much and yet leave so much unsaid.
After all of that, everyone votes and we pick our Oregon Mock Printz winner.
Your group picked the winner for 2022! All My Rage by Sabaa Tahir. Was that the clear favorite?
All My Rage is a very special book and it was a clear frontrunner throughout the entire process for this year. However, there were readers in the group who were just as passionate about I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetys, The Honeys by Ryan LaSala, Ain’t Burned All the Bright by Jason Reynolds, and other books from our list.
How could you see school librarians running a similar program, or what sort of potential partnerships could you see school librarians making with their public libraries with this type of program?
I could see a couple of different ways that school libraries could engage in this type of program. One option would be to connect with the statewide Mock Printz. It is a hybrid program, so teens and adults participated in person and via Zoom. We ran this as a fully virtual experience in 2021 and 2022, so we got a little savvier about how to make the virtual experience work well. Another option for school libraries would be to use our list or create their own and have a short-term book club – maybe discuss two books at a time over 2-4 months – and then have a final meeting to wrangle and decide on their winner. I know libraries also have Mock Printz activities in which people just read on their own and then vote, which is also cool. For me, that element of discussion is so fantastic, I don’t think I could do without it.
Any potential Printz honorees for 2023 already on your radar?
It’s pretty early times, but a few upcoming releases have caught my attention, including Spice Road by Maiya Ibrahim (January 24), She is a Haunting by Trang Thanh Tran (February 28), We are All So Good at Smiling by Amber McBride (January 10), and Into the Light by Mark Oshiro (March 28), and Invisible Son by Kim Johnson (June 27).