Winter is only a few months away. At my library in a seaside community sixty miles south of Boston, one welcome distraction from the plummeting temperatures is our very own award program: the ­Quahog Book Award, named for the local mollusk. It encourages third-through sixth-grade children to read popular literature and pick their favorites from a list of nominated titles.

First established in 2012 by the Friends of the Mattapoisett Free Public Library, Quahog, as we call it, is not part of a national or library network program. It’s a literacy program for local children, similar to summer reading, but in the winter.

Like the distinguished Newbery and Caldecott medals, the Quahog is awarded annually. This year marked the twelfth year our library has held this wildly successful award event and my third year contributing to it. Over the years, the program has grown, morphed, and become the butterfly I know and love today.

Here’s a breakdown of how it works, in case you’d like to try something similar at your own library:

Quahog comes in with the new year. It runs for about three months, from mid-January to the end of April, with the award ceremony usually taking place in early May. Quahog Readers can earn weekly beads, raffle tickets, and a free book by participating in the program. We invite registered patrons to join us at the library for various activities. Attendees can play bingo, complete a scavenger hunt, join a program-specific craft, participate in a voting week, and enjoy a pizza party.

Children must register and select from one of four groups of books contending for the Quahog Book Award. Registration requires a form with the child’s name, grade, address, phone number, selected group, and photo release sheet.

We scaffold the groups so some books are accessible to beginning readers (level 1) while others are suitable for more advanced readers (level 4). Each group features five books nominated by library staff, including fiction, graphic novels, and nonfiction, from various categories that cross all interests and will introduce our youth to many different genres within their chosen level.

First, we ask our participants to judge a book by its cover by circling what appeals to them on a selection sheet and submitting it. We give them a similar sheet at the end to vote. It’s fun to compare the real winners with the aesthetic winners.

During registration, we give patrons a bookmark, a bracelet, and a journal. The journal includes two questions about each title and a five-star rating scale at the bottom. Once a patron selects the group they’re most comfortable with and signs up, they’re ready to pick their first book. We reserve multiple copies of the nominated titles from network libraries and keep them on a cart near the circulation desk.

Every time a child completes a book, they must answer one of the two questions in their journal. Then they bring the journal in, discuss the question with a librarian, and get that page stamped.

After a child completes all five books in their group, they can move to another group and begin again with a new booklist and accompanying journal. We encourage patrons to read as many titles as they can. And when they visit the library, they receive a weekly bead to add to their bracelet even if they haven’t finished a book.

With permission from the school superintendent, we distribute flyers to nearby school library media specialists to share with families. We further promote the program through our local newspaper, email blasts, and social media. Typically, we get about fifty to sixty participants before registration cuts off in mid-March; this ensures patrons have enough time to finish more than one group.

Each group has one winner. The four winners of the Quahog Book Award are announced during a library pizza party sponsored by the Friends. We invite all participants who completed the program to attend.

After the party, we return all the remaining books to their respective libraries. Then, we adorn each of our copies of the four winners with the Quahog Book Seal, a circular drawing of a quahog with the words “Quahog Book Award” in the Caldecott Medal style.

The Basics

Book selection

Selecting books is one of the most challenging parts of the program. Eligible titles are usually books published during the preceding year. Our librarians scour review journals and read as many books as possible, including those ­suggested by community members. This is definitely a team effort.

Starting in October, we’re putting titles on hold and accepting or rejecting them all fall. We’re also looking at books with early winter publication dates. Since we use interlibrary loans to stockpile nominees, we must consider if a book will have enough copies in the system come January.

Journal questions and assembly

Once we have our twenty book picks, we draft questions about their stories. This is where reading the nominees comes in handy. We write two questions about each book — nothing too intricate, just something to engage the patron in a little book discussion (my favorite part). Once we settle those, we create a journal for the four groups. Each journal contains a list of all five books with a blurb, a copy of the program rules, and the book-specific questions.

Planning activities

We schedule a few program-specific events in February, March, and April to keep our participants engaged over the duration of the program. This ­usually comprises one craft-ernoon, bingo games, a book-related scavenger hunt to earn a raffle ticket, and a pizza party to announce the winners. Last year, we added Quahog Jeopardy, featuring one category of questions about each of the nominated books. Patrons must be registered for the reading program to participate in these activities. Attendance is encouraged but not required.

Voting

Quahog participants have one week in April to stop by the library, complete their ballots, and drop them in a group’s corresponding box. Readers must have finished one group, reported their answers, and had their journal stamped in order to vote.

During voting week, participants receive a sheet similar to the one they received at the program’s start. Patrons are asked to circle their favorite titles in each group they’ve read. Once voting ends, our librarians count the votes. This year, one librarian opened the ­ballot boxes and read off the titles, while another double-checked for accuracy and tallied the results. It takes about thirty minutes to determine each group’s winner.

Party time

Quahog Readers must have voted to attend the Friends-sponsored pizza party. The winning books and raffle tickets are announced during this event. Patrons do not need to be present to win.

The Rules

• Read the books from your list and complete the journal pages for each one read.
• Bring each finished journal page to the library to get it stamped.
• Come to the library each week to collect a bead.
• Come to special program-related activities (not a requirement).
• Read all five books from your list, and you can pick a free book as a prize!
• Once you complete one group, you are welcome to pick up an additional group if time allows.
• Finish reading all the books from your group by the specified date, stop by the library to vote, and you will receive an invitation to the pizza party.
• We will announce the winning books at the pizza party.

Dedicated winter reading programs like Quahog encourage children to read for fun during the colder months and provide an entertaining activity to look forward to, while also giving librarians a great way to engage with patrons, library Friends, and coworkers during the darkest days of the year.

Recent Quahog Book Award Winners

2022
Level 1: Pup Detectives: The First Case (Little Simon, 2021) by Felix Gumpaw; illus. by Glass House Graphics
Level 2: Sherlock Bones and the Natural History Mystery (Clarion/HarperCollins, 2020) by Renée Treml
Level 3: The Elephant in the Room (Rocky Pond/Penguin, 2021) by Holly Goldberg Sloan
Level 4: City Spies (Aladdin/Simon, 2021) by James Ponti

2023
Level 1: The Haunted Mustache (Aladdin/Simon, 2021) by Joe McGee; illus. by Teo Skaffa
Level 2: A Rover’s Story (Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins, 2022) by Jasmine Warga
Level 3: Odder (Feiwel, 2022) by Katherine Applegate
Level 4: Hummingbird (Scholastic, 2022) by Natalie Lloyd

2024
Level 1: The Story of Gumluck the Wizard (Chronicle, 2023) by Adam Rex
Level 2: The Mystery of the Radcliffe Riddle (Sourcebooks, 2023) by Taryn Souders
Level 3: The Firefly Summer (Simon, 2023) by Morgan Matson
Level 4: Whale Done (Simon, 2023) by Stuart Gibbs

From the September/October 2024 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.

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