The Colorado Blue Spruce Young Adult Book Award.
The award began in 1985. It was created by a group of secondary school educators and librarians who saw the need for more emphasis on reading. The committee included representatives from the Colorado Chapter of the International Reading Association, the Colorado Language Arts Society, the Colorado State Library and the Colorado Association of Libraries.
The stated mission of the Blue Spruce Award was to stimulate, promote and encourage reading among young adults. Each year, hundreds of teens particpated by reading nominated books and placing their votes.
In 2020, the committee could no longer sustain the award due to lack of support from its contributing organizations, teachers and students.
Partners in Literacy is excited to steward the award. We envision a shift in the emphasis of the award. There will now be two awards. Between 1985 and 2020, the winning book was the book receiving the most votes from student voters. The emphasis was on the popularity of the book. We will keep that award and call it the Readers’ Choice Award, but in addition, there will be a Juried Award judged by mentor-lead book groups from all parts of the state.
In this time of WE NEED DIVERSE BOOKS and OWN VOICES, we have elicited the help of preteen and teen “book teams” from all regions of Colorado to choose books that speak particularly to them. These book teams will each of the power to nominate one book and to vote on their favorite.
All books that will be considered for the award, must be posted on the the CBSA Eligible Book Padlet. This allows teachers, librarians, mentors and judges to post books that they love in genres that they love. This makes it easier for student book teams to decide to diversify their reading.