The William Allen White Award nominating committee selects books in two age ranges-third through fifth and sixth through eighth. This award is determined solely by the vote of Kansas students. In order to qualify to vote, a youngster must read at least two books from either one of the lists. This award, made in honor of Emporia journalist William Allen White, was instituted in 1954.

Local students are being asked to review William Allen White Award nominated books right up until voting takes place in April of 2009.  Here are two more reviews.

Title: Julia's Kitchen
Author: Brenda A. Ferber
Reviewed by: Ashley Johnson
5th grade - Cottonwood Intermediate School

Cara Segal was close to her mom. They baked cookies and challahs together. Cara helped her mom with her catering business. That life has now been turned upside down. While Cara was spending the night at a friend's house, her house caught fire from the oven.

Cara's little sister died in the fire, and so did her mom and the family cat, Sport. Only her dad survived the fire. Now dad is too stricken to talk and Cara's friend Marlee runs out of sympathy. Cara keeps asking God why the fire happened and why her mom and little sister died.

Cara now needs to try to move on with her life, but how can she? Read Julia's Kitchen and see what happens.

Title: Toys Go Out
Author: Emily Jenkins
Reviewed by: Rebecca Calderon
3rd grade - Lincoln Elementary

The book I read is called Toys Go Out by Emily Jenkins. This story is about three toys: a buffalo named Lumphy, a stingray named Stingray, and a ball named Plastic who belonged to a little girl. In this story these three toys have a lot of adventures. This is the one that I like best.

One evening Stingray, who thought she knew everything, was talking about school books. Plastic took out an animal book and looked at the pictures of a stingray and a buffalo. It told about where they lived and what they ate. So next she looked up plastics. She couldn't find anything about it. Then she looked in the dictionary and found that plastics were artificial. When she looked up artificial, it gave the definition of fake. She didn't like what she found out because artificial didn't sound nice.

Plastic next went to the bathroom to talk to TukTuk, a towel, who saw a lot of people and knew about a lot of things. TukTuk told her that Plastic was only her name and she was a ball. TukTuk told her that balls bounce and roll, but have no arms and legs, fur, or even noses. Plastic agreed that she could do these things and didn't have the others. This made her very excited and she started rolling and bouncing all over the bathroom. She is very happy to finally know what she is and goes back to the bedroom.

I really liked this book because it's fun to imagine that toys can come to life and talk. If you like make-believe stories, this would be a very good book to read.