Book Bash Announcements

Hello all! :)

1. Winners. We do not have the list of winners yet. If you're checking the Book Bash web site for updates, then you know that we are waiting on the judges to respond to their finalist packets. When the responses are in, we will announce the winners, process the critiques and get the winners their comments. We anticipate this will happen in the next two weeks. However, there may be some categories that take longer. Please be patient with us. If you have not yet determined if you're a finalist, please check the page for the category you entered on the Book Bash web site, and find out if you're listed.

2. Prizes. We will be awarding prizes to the winners in all categories except the adults. When the contest was conceived, we were planning on an award ceremony that would happen locally, where a table of trophies would be distributed, kind of like the science fair last year. However, we were not anticipating the country-wide and in some cases world-wide attention the contest would get, and the fact that the vast majority of our finalists are outside driving distance for any Norfolk event. If we buy trophies and then pay to mail them to you, the mailing will definitely cost more than the trophy. Instead, we are going to send Barnes & Noble gift certificates and let you have that money rather than the post office. More info to come.

3. Feedback. I am working my way through a huge pile of entries that did not make the finals but that I feel should have some feedback. I am not giving feedback on all of the poetry or picture books, but I am responding to all novels, short stories, fables, etc. In particular, I am giving suggestions and encouragement to the amazingly huge number of students who wrote novels in the 3rd-6th grade, the 7th-9th grade, and the 10th-12th grade categories. Unfortunately, several of the entry forms have email addresses that are illegible or incomplete. One person had an email without the @whatever.com part. One had one that was so garbled I tried sending my comments to 4 different possible variations and they were all sent back. That is a little frustrating. So, if you do not get comments back and you wrote a novel or short story, you may be one of the people whose email address was wrong or garbled or incomplete. I tried.

I think that's it! Thank you for your patience and understanding!