Mock Printz Results

So, we met this past Monday and had ourselves a very great time discussing our 10 Mock Printz Titles. There was homemade toffee (yum!), there was cheese, there were crackers. The food was plentiful and delicious. I did not manage to take notes on people's thoughts about books because my brain is only about half functioning at any time lately and I couldn't spare the brainpower it would have taken to take notes and listen at the same time. NEVERTHELESS! I did record the voting, which was very interesting:

For those just interested in the winner, look no further. For those of you interested in the nitty gritty of the voting please read further!

Mock Printz Winner:

A Monster Calls - Patrick Ness

Mock Printz Honors:

Blood Red Road - Moira Young

Everybody Sees the Ants - A.S. King

First Vote:

the first number notes the number of 1st place votes. The second number notes the number of points each book receive. Each participant voted for their top three choices for the Printz winner:

A Monster Calls: 6/29
Imaginary Girls: 0/3
Between Shades of Gray: 0/2
Berlin Boxing Club: 0/5
Divergent: 0/0
Daughter of Smoke and Bone: 0/8
Blood Red Road: 2/16
Everybody Sees the Ants: 2/22
Where Things Come Back: 1/8
Flesh and Blood so Cheap: 0/2

Obviously, there were two runaway titles there in A Monster Calls and Everyone Sees the Ants.

Second Vote:

We held a second round vote on the bolded titles above to see if we could have a more decisive winner (and we hadn't met our 8 point lead that we needed for a winner).

A Monster Calls: 6/33
Blood Red Road: 1/18
Everybody Sees the Ants: 3/33
Where Things Come Back: 0/9

So, um, wow, that didn't help. While A Monster Calls had more first place votes, the 7 point lead it had in the first point totally disappeared in the second vote to a 0 point lead. However, it was clear that we had two front runners.

Someone pointed out how interesting it was that we so obviously favored two books that dealt with death, dreams and bullying, there are "visitors" that teach lessons, both have elements of magical realism. And yet, those two books are as different as night and day. Waaaaay different approach to many of the same themes.

We made an executive decision to have a straight up and down vote between the two titles, whichever received the most votes would win:

Third Vote:

A Monster Calls: 6 votes
Everybody Sees the Ants: 4 votes

So close! In the interest of time we declared A Monster Calls the winner (props to those who argued for both books - it was a very spirited discussion).

Honor Vote:

Because the voting was so concentrated amongst the top five books we decided to eliminate the other titles immediately from honor consideration. The books that remained were:

Daughter of Smoke and Bone: 0/8
Blood Red Road: 2/16
Everybody Sees the Ants: 2/22
Where Things Come Back: 1/8

There was still an obvious preference for two of the titles above the others, so much so we weren't sure it was worth our time to re-discuss the other titles. So we decided to have a vote about how many honor books people were thinking we should have.

The results:

2: one honor
7: two honors
1: multiple honors.

So we got rid of the two with only 8 points and called it a day! This is not Printz procedure, we just had a little time left and wanted to maximize our efficiency. Plus no one really wanted to fight for Daughter of Smoke and Bone or Where Things Come Back (even though I cried invisible tears for it, not even I wanted to champion it that much).

Hope you enjoyed our voting!