LAL Update

My email this morning included an update from the national coordinator of the Letters About Literature writing competition. If you are a parent or teacher who sent letters for this competition this year you may have received this email as well (depending on how clearly you wrote your email address on the entry coupon.) For those of you who didn't receive this email, here are the highlights:

• The national competition coordinators are still processing the more than 56,000 letters they received from young readers across the nation!
• The first two rounds of judging are just about complete, which means most of the state semi-finalists have been selected. A hefty 5,000 to 8,000 letters will advance to the next level of judging.
• In February, more than 150 state-level judges (including authors, publishers, teachers, librarians, and even a governor’s spouse or two) will read the semi-finalists in their state and select their top essayists on all three competition levels.
• Each state center for the book (including NH) will then contact their winning writers in March.
• The Center for the Book in the Library of Congress will announce our six national winners no later than the first week in May.

This is the fourth year that New Hampshire has participated in this competition and more entries were received this year (473 entries had been logged as of mid-January) than ever before.