Our friends at the Vancouver, BC, Chapter of Room to Read were honored in San Francisco last week.  The Chapter receive a "Zackie" (reference to Zack the Yak that carried the first delivery of books to a library by Room to Read).  The Vancouver team completed an excellent year full of initiatives that were rewarded by great success in fund-raising for the benefits of the children served by Room to Read.

Congratulations to Chapter Leaders Lisa Clement, Sharon Davis, Joyce Reid and their team!

Labels: awards, Room to Read, vancouver

We are pleased to announce the winners of the Simone Wood Award for 2009. The Simone Wood Award was put together by as a memorial for Simone Wood by her family, and is the first memorial award to be put together and hosted on our website. We were very excited when Simone Wood's family came to us with their idea for a memorial award that celebrated the things in life that Simone Wood loved, dance and children. The entire award has been generously donated by the family members, and Sharing Books has been honoured to be a part of this family legacy.

All the books submitted for the Simone Wood Award were children's books themed and focused on dance, dance culture, and the freedom of expression that comes with dance. Only books focused on dance and published through Sharing Books from April 3rd, 2009 to May 31st, 2009 were originally targeted for acceptance, but due to some server issues we extended the acceptance window to June 5, 2009. Award winners are determined by the highest number of downloads during the month of June, 2009. We thank all the authors, illustrators, and book creators who submitted dance themed work to the site.

Here, without further adieu, are the winners of the Simone Wood Award:

1. 1st Place: Zoo Dance, authored by JR Poulter and illustrated by Jade Potts.
2. 2nd Place: My Pretty Pointe Shoes, authored by Timothy Schenk and illustrated by Timothy Schenk.
3. 3rd Place: Whop Bop Menagiere, authored by JR Poulter and illustrated by Joy Steuerwald.

Labels: awards, contest, dance, Simone Wood

So right as the final sprint for the Simone Wood Award, 2009 was underway a series of major failures occurred with our server. We are still trying to piece together what happened, and we will try to keep you informed. It involves multiple systems having multiple problems, and is proving a Gordian knot to untangle. So much like Alexander the great we took a knife to the knot, and the site is back to accepting books for publication.

We know that some people have not had their books properly upload over the last few days, so we are asking that they re-upload their books. We are going to give a grace window for the affected users over the weekend, allowing them to upload during this week until Friday, and accept them into the contest.

Further details on how this is going to affect the contest will be posted by Wednesday. We apologize for the inconvenience this is causing.

Labels: awards, contest, news, Simone Wood, site outages

So there are only a few days left to get your work into the Simone Wood Contest, 2009. This is your chance to win some of the $600 in prizes up for grabs, so if you have been working on your book for the last few months don't miss your window to get into the contest! You have until midnight on Sunday to get your work submitted to Sharing Books.

The contest will then run during the month of June, and the most popular books will win the awards. Keep in mind this is a full juried award, and will look awesome on your CV! Street cred comes on the side!

Labels: awards, contests, deadline, Simone Wood

The Simone Wood Award, 2009

Sharing Books is pleased to announce the Simone Wood Award for Children’s Literature. Simone Wood was an avid supporter of dance and her family have launched this award on Simone’s birthday to honour her life-long passion that she gave to successive generations.

The Simone Wood Award is available to any book creators who publish their work through Sharing Books. Eligible works must be focused on dance, dance themes, and/or the history and development of dance. Any of the children's books published on Sharing Books from April 3rd 2009 to May 31st 2009, with dance as their primary focus, will be automatically entered in the contest for the Simone Wood Award for Children’s Literature. This is a juried award, and a jury of content reviewers will determine whether the works submitted fall within the content guidelines.

The award will be given to the three most downloaded books on the Sharing Books site during the month of June, 2009 as follows:
• First Place award of $300 Canadian to the most downloaded book in June
• Second Place award of $200 Canadian to the second most downloaded book in June
• Third Place award of $100 Canadian to the third most downloaded book in June

Awards will be divided equally between the author and illustrator of illustrated works, or in granted in whole to the author in non-illustrated works.

Simone Wood Award, 2009 Eligibility Guidelines

1) The work must have a 'dance' focus. The work must contain content focused on dance, dance movements, dance culture, cultural dances, or dance history that forms the core or pivotal point of the work. There is no restriction on the type of dance, or the nature or approach to dance that is taken in the work.

Examples of eligible works would be:
• A story about a child going to their first ballet class.
• A mythological story about dance gods or goddesses.
• A story about a teacher running a dance pageant at her school.
• A picture book that shows a performance in visual and poetic form.

2) The work must be geared towards children.

3) Works must be submitted to Sharing Books between April 3rd 2009 and May 31st 2009. Works that are submitted, but not published and awaiting approval to go on the site by May 31st 2009 will still be eligible to enter the contest for the Simone Wood Award for Children’s Literature, 2009.

4) All submitted works will be chosen for eligibility by a team of jurors.

5) Winners are chosen based on the downloads of the books from 12:00am June 1st, 2009 to 11:59pm June 30th, 2009 PST.

Labels: awards, contest, news