Soar With the Eagles!

Going into its sixth year in 2008, The Golden Eagle Book Award is a literary award that is given annually to an Alberta writer whose book is selected by children in grades four through eight from schools in the southern Alberta communities of Claresholm, Nanton, Stavely, Granum, Fort Macleod, Pincher Creek and Lundbreck. CHECK OUT THE 2008 TITLES.

The award is the brainchild of an organizing committee headed by Claresholm public librarian Kathy Bantle and comprising librarians, teachers, parents and Project READ volunteers and the Claresholm Local Press. "We wanted to come up with an idea that would get kids fired up about reading and at the same time be a great promotion for the communities involved," Bantle said.

What makes this award so exciting is the fact that the winning book is selected by the very readers children's writers are writing for. Bantle noted that although there are other Children's Choice awards across Canada, the Golden Eagle award is unique in that it concentrates on Alberta books and writers. The student judges have been given a list of books selected by a committee of area teachers and librarians. To qualify as a student judge, a student must agree to read a minimum of five of the selected books, then vote for his/her favourite. The final reading day for this year's competition was Friday, March 2. The authors of the three short-listed books were invited into the area April 3-4 to conduct author visits in the schools involved in the award. The announcement of the winning author took place April 4 at an evening gala at West Meadow Middle School in Claresholm.

The award ceremony was attended by the three short-listed authors as well as the student judges and their families, and the organizing committee. The winning author received a framed, hand-crafted Golden Eagle award that was created locally - a much-coveted award in Western Canada's writing community. The competition and organization of the award is a major undertaking that involves acquiring and distributing forty copies of each title for the 800 plus potential student judges, monitoring the voting (by secret ballot), fund-raising, coordinating the author visits in schools and staging the gala. The reading/judging is already underway in order to give students sufficient time to read the required number of books. A grand prize is drawn from among student-judges names.