And the Mock Caldecott winner is...

Last night I got together with several of my coworkers for a very casual Mock Caldecott discussion. We checked out stacks and stacks of picture books from many Mock Caldecott lists. We ordered pizza. And we talked picture books.

After three rounds of voting, we declared a tie for the Caldecott Medal:

Boycott Blues by Andrea Davis Pinkney, illustrated by J. Brian Pinkney and On the Farm by David Elliott, illustrated by Holly Meade.

We also declared four honor books:

Cat & Mouse by Ian Schoenherr, Wabi Sabi by Mark Reibstein and Ed Young, We Are the Ship by Kadir Nelson, and The House in the Night by Susan Marie Swanson and Beth Krommes.

I've never predicted any of the awards correctly before and the Caldecott stumps me the most out of all of them. But this was a great excuse to get together with my awesome colleagues and familiarize ourselves with some of the best pictures books published this year.

Tomorrow we'll find out for real... can you feel the anticipation building??