• Co-Chairs
• Award guidelines
  
• Award logo (JPG)
• Committee composition & responsibilities
• Committee reports
• TeachingBooks resources

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Make sure to collect and save student votes throughout the year.

• Voting form (coming Jan 2027)

• Packet (PDF, Word)
• Bookmark (PDF)
• Labels (PDF, Word)
  
• Nominees poster (PDF, PNG)

Jenn Beckstead (WLA)

Leanne Woodfill (WSLA)

Past committee members list

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The Soaring Eagle Book Award will consist of one list for grades 7-12. Librarians, reading, and English teachers solicit nominations from Wyoming students in grades 7-12. The nominations are sent to the committee by March 1. If any nomination summary forms are returned with incomplete information, the committee may disregard them. The award committee meets to finalize a list of titles for grades 7-12. This list becomes the ballot for the next school year.

Nominations

• The book may be fiction or nonfiction.
• The book must currently be in print and have a copyright date within the last five years.
• Adult books may be nominated.
• The book must not have appeared first as a movie or TV show.

Voting

• Each Wyoming student in grades 7-12 who has read at least three books on the list may vote for his or her favorite book.
• Voting takes place during the month of March. The sponsoring librarian or teacher tabulates the ballots and the ballot tally sheet is returned to the committee by March 15.

Considerations

• Use published guidelines for nominations.
• Consider the number of student nominations.
• There must be at least two positive recommendations in professional book reviewing publications or by committee members.
• Each book for the final ballot will have been read by at least one committee member.
• Only one title by each author will be included on the list. Consider the number of student nominations as the deciding factor.
• Books that are past winners of the Soaring Eagle or Indian Paintbrush Awards can't be on the list.
• No books by the winning author can appear on the following year’s list.
• No title can be on the list two consecutive years.
• When two or more books, in a series by the same author, have reviews which are equally good and have an equal number of nominations, the earlier one in the series is added to the list.
• For books by Wyoming authors with no reviews, committee members decide on quality of the book after it is read by at least two committee members.
• Consider grade level appropriateness of nominations.
• Consider including some high interest/low vocabulary books.
• Young adult books may contain some adult language and situations.
• The list shouldn't exceed ten titles.

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• Eight members: four from each sponsoring organization, appointed by governing members of the organizations or designees.
• Three-year terms with four terms expiring annually, provided not more than half the committee is new.
• Two consecutive terms allowed.
• Terms begin before the spring meeting.
• Any member serving a partial term is eligible to serve three additional terms.
• Two members, acting as co-chairs, one from each organization, will be responsible to the parent organizations.
• Members must be on the committee for at least one year before becoming a co-chair.
• Co-chairs' terms of office should expire on alternate years.
• Expenses (cost of the award, postage, display board, treats for the meeting, packet expenses) will be submitted to the WLA secretary.
• Letters sent to the publishers will be coordinated between the committees.

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