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Winners of the PB & Kid Judges writing competition will be announced early!
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After 163 third and fourth-grade students listened to and voted for their favorite PB & Kid Judges entries, the results are IN! Because I am a school librarian and absolutely love to read out loud, I gave two PB & Kellie (me) Read Aloud Awards. These stories read smoothly, and the voice and tone shine! Thank you all for participating! Memories were made, and you were a part of making that possible. I am proud to call myself a part of this writing community. These entries were nothing short of fantastic.  Proudly post your badges! 
 The top 25 will receive prizes! I will connect prize donors to the recipients soon.
If you see a mistake in the spelling of your name or book title, please don't hesitate to contact me [email protected]. The PB & Kid Judges entries have been narrowed down to the top 25. This week, students are reading and voting. We will have the top 5-7 by the end of this week. Those 5-7 stories will be read aloud to the students and they will score them again. I should have the results by May 9th, 2025, and will anounce the winners shortly after.
The top three winners will receive a winner badge and choose their prize in the order of their outcome. Since we had so many amazing donations, we will have 22 honorable mentions. They will receive an honorable mention badge and a prize. These prizes will be dispersed at random. The entry form is LIVE! Student Dillon Adams is the winner of the logo contest!You will continue to see her design as well as other student artists.   Engage with this post on:
Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/authorkelliebeggs.bsky.social Facebook https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61550280704181 Instagram https://www.instagram.com/authorkelliebeggs Twitter https://twitter.com/kbeggsauthor to be entered for a chance to win a critique from author Stephanie Ward! Vivian Kirkfield's #50PreciousWords Competition was my extension group's first glimpse of what a competition in the writing community looks like. I was awarded with an honorable mention for Beware of bog and then the questions from the kids came pouring in. How do you start a competition? Who decides on the rules? Who picks the winners? Where do the prizes come from? Would people enter a contest without a prize? The overwhelming answer to the last question was NO! They had no faith that someone would enter a competition for bragging rights. One thing was clear, THEY wanted to host a writing competition because they wanted to be the judges! That was on a Monday. My job... to find prizes. Since my income is a teacher's salary and not many adults would be ok with a sticker as a prize, I went to Blue Sky and asked the writing community to help out. And they did--in a BIG way. More on that later. Tuesday: students decided on a name #PBandKidJudges Wednesday: I made a temporary logo on Canva, but we wanted the art to be original and created by kids, so I contacted our local high school art teacher. Her students will be working on designs all next week! Thursday: Guidelines and dates were decided. Friday (today): I am creating the web information and submission form. Also, as of today, we have over 20 prize donations being offered by the writing community to winners of this contest! That's AMAZING! Thank you to everyone who is making this possible! My students are motivated like never before. You are making dreams come true. Also, thank you for your patience as I build this competition from the ground up. Between teaching classes all day and writing when I can on the nights and weekends, I've had to purposefully carve out time to create this event. I haven't had one negative comment from creatives about anything! That shows what a positive community there is among kid lit creatives. Here's Beware of bog that started it all! 
I am excited to lead and guide an extension group called Critique Club at the elementary school I teach at. This group will learn to look critically at manuscripts written by children’s authors and give the author valuable feedback. They will develop skills to prepare them to participate in collaborative discussions and practice building on others’ ideas and expressing their ideas clearly.
Here are glimpses of our Critique Club at work!
A month ago, I put out a call to creators of children's books to write an encouraging letter to my students. It was inspired by one of my 3rd grade students who checks his mailbox everyday to see if he has gotten a response to the fan mail he sent to his favorite author.
The response has been overwhelming and has truly enriched my students' library experience. These are the creators that have written my students (In the order that I remember them AKA no particular order):
Debbie Dadey-author Lizzie Brooks-author Jessica Whipple-author Vicky Fang-author Lindsay Leslie-author Flashlight Press-publisher Laura Lavoie- author Stephanie Henson-author Lori Keating-author Karen Nespoli-author Kari Lavelle-author Kim Collazo-author Pat Zietlow Miller-author Jenny Turnbull-author Valerie Bolling-author Ame Dykman-author Phyllis Harris-author/illustrator Carrie Finikson-author Jenny Pease-author  This is especially true when a child corrects you. You can choose to argue or ignore them, but I encourage you to take a moment to do a little research with them. If you are correct, they learn something. If they are correct, you both learn something.
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