And the winner of the 2018 Calling Caldecott mock vote is…

. . . Dan Santat’s After the Fall (How Humpty Dumpty Got Back Up Again)

After the Fall received a whopping 456 total points, garnering 77 first-place votes. And for our purposes, making it the clear winner.

(How would that translate to numbers on an actual Caldecott committee ballot? As decisive as the numbers look on our second and final ballot, the actual Caldecott Committee would need to vote at least one more time. According to 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.” If we look at the first-place votes in our second ballot and imagine them spread out over just 15 people, After the Fall would have received approximately 5 first-place votes. And in that case, the actual committee would need to run a third ballot…and perhaps a fourth… etc.)

But back to us! Here are the full results of our mock vote:

And here’s a visual picture of the results:

Now, on to the choosing of the honor books. Again, from the Caldecott 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.”

This year, if the real committee were working with our results and used the “next highest books on the original winning ballot,” the decision seems like a fairly stark one: to choose the two next highest vote getters, Windows and Wolf in the Snow, with 350 and 333 total points, respectively. And because needs must, and we here at Calling Caldecott call it a day after the second ballot, these wonderful books are indeed our honor books, too!

There we have it. Congratulations to all!

(On the real committee, remember, another ballot for honor books could be called, and that could yield entirely different results — or very similar ones…)

We want to thank everyone who participated in Calling Caldecott this year. Thanks to our heroic Guest Posters: Thom Barthelmess, Betsy Bird, Sam Bloom, Edith Campbell, Eric Carpenter, Amy Seto Forrester, Amanda Foulk, Elisa Gall, Patrick Gall, Jonathan Hunt, Travis Jonker, Allison Grover Khoury, Megan Dowd Lambert, Erika Long, Michelle H. Martin, J. Elizabeth Mills, Rachel G. Payne, Celia Pérez, Tarie Sabido, Dean Schneider, Emmie Stuart, Roger Sutton, Misti Tidman, and Brian Wilson. They brought fresh eyes and fresh voices to our coverage, and we are truly grateful. Thanks too to everyone who commented this fall and to everyone who voted this past week.

We will have further coverage from the ALA Midwinter conference, which begins this Friday — including, of course, a report on the Actual Winners, which will be announced at Monday morning’s Youth Media Awards press conference.

Can’t wait! Talk to you then. And again, thank you all.

From the February 2018 issue of The Horn Book Herald: ALA Youth Media Awards Edition.