Approximately four hundred of you (judging by the number of first-place votes) took part in our second vote yesterday, with every one of the remaining eight books on the ballot garnering significant support (see results below). Congratulations to all those deserving and distinguished picture books! and best of luck in the real world as the Real Caldecott committee begins its final deliberations this weekend.

The winner of our Mock Caldecott, with 577 total points, is Last Stop on Market Street, written by Matt de la Pena and illustrated by Christian Robinson. Hooray and huzzah! It was one of the two top vote-getters on the first ballot (with it and Kevin Henkes's Waiting separated from the rest of the field by a wide margin), and it held a commanding lead all the way on this second ballot.

On the Real Committee, would this vote spread have been enough to declare it the winner? Well, no, since on the Real Committee, consisting of 15 members, a book needs a majority of first-place votes. Here is the relevant portion of the Caldecott Manual:

"There is a formula to determine the winner. A book must receive at least 8 first choices at four points per vote for a total of at least 32 points, and it must have an 8 point lead over the book receiving the next highest number of points."

We would have needed several more ballots to arrive at a majority, with 400 people voting. But the numbers show a clear distance between Last Stop on Market Street and the other seven books, and so we are very happy to declare it our winner!

Here are the full results:

	1st choice (4 points)	2nd choice (3 points)	3rd choice (2 points)	Total points
Boats for Papa	46	41	38	383
Drum Dream Girl	37	47	47	383
Finding Winnie	38	50	52	406
Float	65	47	36	473
Last Stop on Market Street	75	59	50	577
Two Mice	35	27	30	281
Waiting	58	52	37	462
Water Is Water	45	35	59	403

 

Here's a visual picture of the results:



As you can see, these numbers make it easy to pick the winner but present a challenge when it comes to choosing honor books. Look how closely the books under Market Street line up with one another. And the process of choosing honor books is much more fluid and subjective and less rigid than the process of choosing the winner. Again, from the Manual:

"Immediately following determination of the winner of the Caldecott Medal, and following appropriate discussion, the committee will entertain the following:

• Whether honor books will be named.


• Whether the committee wishes to choose as honor books the next highest books on the original winning ballot or to ballot again.


• If the committee votes to use the award-winning ballot, they must then determine how many honor books to name.


• If the committee chooses to ballot for honor books, only books that received points on the award winning ballot may be included. The same voting procedure is followed as for the award winner.


• If the committee has chosen to ballot for honor books, following that ballot, the committee will vote how many books of those receiving the highest number of points are to be named honor books."

Robin, Lolly, and I decided to choose the next two highest vote-getters — Daniel Miyares's Float and Kevin Henkes's Waiting — as our honor books. Congratulations to them! But, as no one in our field will ever forget, last year the actual Caldecott committee named an unprecedented six honor books, and we might easily have gone that route here, as well — and the numbers would have supported that decision. It just goes to show how much wiggle room there is in the process of choosing honor books! On an actual Caldecott committee, faced with these numbers, the chair might well have called for a new ballot in order to get a clearer separation between the remaining books.

So there you have it.

We want to thank everyone who participated in Calling Caldecott this year. Thanks to our heroic Guest Posters: Dean Schneider, KT Horning, Roger Sutton, Deborah Taylor, Julie Danielson, Angela Frederick, Elissa Gershowitz, Allison Barney, Sam Bloom, Celia Perez, Elisa Gall, Megan Dowd Lambert, Vicky Smith, and Jennifer Brabander. They brought fresh eyes and fresh voices to the book discussion. Thanks to everyone who commented this fall and to everyone who voted this week. And, of course, HUGE thanks to the authors and artists who created the masterpieces that are the 2015 picture books.

Don't go away: we will be back with news from the ALA Midwinter conference; a report on Monday morning's Youth Media Awards press conference, where the Actual Winners are announced; and, we hope, after the dust has settled, a special post by the chair of the 2016 Caldecott Committee. Looking forward to it all! Meanwhile, your comments, as always, are welcome :)