Mark Twain Readers Award


The Mark Twain Readers Award, or simply Mark Twain Award, is a children's book award which annually recognizes one book selected by vote of Missouri schoolchildren from a list prepared by librarians and volunteer readers. It is now one of four Missouri Association of School Librarians Readers Awards and is associated with school grades 4 to 6; the other MASL Readers Awards were inaugurated from 1995 to 2009 and are associated with grades K–3, 6–8, and 9–12. The 1970 Newbery Medal winning book Sounder, by William H. Armstrong, was the inaugural winner of the Mark Twain Award in 1972.
Peg Kehret has won the Mark Twain Award four times, once in 1999 for , a memoir of her childhood, and three times in six years from 2007 to 2012 for novels.

Nomination guidelines

Though the list of nominated books is designated for grades four through six, any student can vote for the winner so long as they satisfy the following criteria:
Schools design their own ballots. Individual votes for each school are tallied on a single sheet and submitted to the MASL.

Winners

Books published in 2011 were eligible for 2013/14 nomination, and thus for the 2014 award. Early in August 2014, MASL was soliciting nominations of 2013 publications for the 2016 award.
The award has recognized a single book by a single writer without exception from 1972.