2018 Indiana Early Literacy Firefly Award Winner Announced

This year’s Firefly Award winner will light up summer evenings for little readers!

We have exciting news for book lovers from the Indiana Center for the Book (ICB). ICB Director Suzanne Walker announced that author Mac Barnett and illustrator Brian Biggs are the 2018 Indiana Early Literacy Firefly Award winners. They won for their book Noisy Night.

The Indiana Early Literacy Firefly Award is an initiative of the ICB. The award promotes early childhood literacy in Indiana. Indiana’s Firefly committee is made up of Hoosier librarians, caregivers and project coordinators. So, every member has special insight into what books delight little readers – and help them learn.

The process is pretty simple, but it involves some very important (and pretty young) voters. The committee nominates five books each year. Then, Hoosier kids ages 0-5 vote for their favorite. Of course, the little book critics get a bit of voting help from grown-ups.

2018 runners up include:

• Hooray for Birds! by Lucy Cousins
• Blocks by Irene Dickson
• Spunky Little Monkey by Bill Martin Jr. and Michael Sampson
• Everybunny Dance! by Ellie Sandall

“The coolest thing about this award is that it is voted on by Hoosier children,” says Walker. “It is really fun to see the young children try to decide which book out of five is their favorite.”

“I was fascinated to see how many votes Noisy Night received at my library,” says Cathy Butcher, a librarian in Flora, Indiana. “We don’t have any apartment buildings in our little rural town, but this book really held the interest of our preschoolers.”

This is the fourth year of the Indiana Early Literacy Firefly Award. This year, 54 Indiana counties submitted votes for the award. More than 5,000 children voted. Public libraries and child cares programs collect the votes.

The books are picked based on how well they help families use the Every Child Ready to Read® practices. Those practices are talking, singing, reading, writing and playing. Most importantly, the goals is help families do those things together. Caregivers and parents alike can use the Firefly books as a go-to resource. Each book can make it easy for little readers to have fun and learn.