Reading session for 2013 Golden Baobab Prizes ends

The Golden Baobab Prizes for African children’s literature has ended the reading session of its evaluation process for the 2013 prize. This year, a total of 180 stories were submitted from thirteen African countries which brings the total number of entries submitted to the Golden Baobab Prize over the last 5 years to over 1,000 stories. With the near-completion of its publishing arm, Golden Baobab will soon be publishing some of these amazing stories!

Golden Baobab ensures that its reading team is made up of a wide variety of people. This year’s reading panel comprised students, physicians, architects, teaching and research assistants, a librarian, an archaeobotanist and a communications specialist who spanned various geographical locations such as Kenya, Bahrain, Botswana, The Netherlands, Ghana, North America, U.K, Guinea Bissau and Canada.

The evaluation process for the Golden Baobab Prizes is in two stages: the reading session and the judging session. The reading session is one of the most important aspects of the prize as it determines which stories go on to the judging session.

At the beginning of the reading session the readers receive a video walk-through of the reading process and a Golden Baobab Evaluation Handbook to go through. In the next week, readers receive readers’ packs which include personalized score sheets and a set of stories. Each story is read and scored at most three times and after the second read, stories with the lowest scores are dropped. After the stories have been read three times, the scores are averaged. The highest scoring stories then make the long list which is forwarded to the judges to begin the judging session, at the end of which the winners and shortlisted entrants are determined.

The long list will be announced on Friday, 30^th August, 2013, followed by the shortlist on Wednesday, 30^th October, 2013. The winners of the 2013 Golden Baobab Prize will be announced on Wednesday, 13^th November, 2013.