The Towner Award 

Previous Winners:

2017 Tricky Vic: The Impossibly True Story of the Man Who Sold the Eiffel Tower, by Greg Pizzoli

2016 Neighborhood Sharks, by Katherine Roy

2015 Barbed Wire Baseball, by Marissa Moss

2014 Snakes, by Nic Bishop 

Voting is for students in grade 2 through 6 in Washington State. Student votes can be submitted by school and public librarians only. In addition, we will recognize an Educators' Choice. This is your chance to share with other educators which book you found most useful in the classroom.

2018 Towner Award Nominees - Text Sets (PDF)

• Alpha Bravo Charlie: the Complete Book of Nautical Codes by Sara Gillingham

• Animals by the Numbers: a Book of Animal Infographics by Steve Jenkins

• Best in Snow by April Pulley Sayre

• Circles by David Adler

• Freedom Over Me: Eleven Slaves, Their Lives and Dreams Brought to Life by Ashley Bryan

• The Great Monkey Rescue: Saving the Golden Lion Tamarins by Sandra Markle 
  

• I Dissent: Ruth Bader Ginsburg Makes Her Mark by Debbie Levy

• Pink is for Blobfish: Discovering the World's Perfectly Pink Animals by Jess Keating 

• Whoosh!: Lonnie Johnson's Super-Soaking Stream of Inventions by Chris Barton

• Will's Words: How William Shakespeare Changed the Way You Talk by Jane Sutcliffe

All 10 Text Sets in one file (PDF)

Join the Towner!

Our enthusiastic committee is looking for a few good members. Click here to apply!

The Washington State Student Award for Informational Text

The Towner Award is named after Bill Towner, longtime Seattle librarian and mentor to dozens of librarians. Bill was an outstanding teacher-librarian who worked with thousands of students from all backgrounds and taught all of them his love of literature. Bill showed us how caring teachers and librarians can make a difference.

This award is intended to complement other awards determined by student vote in the state of Washington; the Sasquatch, Washington’s Children Choice Picture Book and Young Readers’ Choice Awards. It is sponsored by the Washington Library Association School Library Division and intended for books enjoyed by students in grades Two through Six.

For the purposes of this award, Informational Text is defined as that which serves chiefly to convey factual information to the reader and may contain biography, narrative and other forms.

Each year a slate of ten books will be selected by a group of librarians from Washington state. This group will include public and school librarians, and members will be selected so as to provide representation for different parts of the state.