The Narrow-It-Down Poll: Help us finalize our Heavy Medal Book List

We’ve completed all three rounds of nominations on Heavy Medal, with the full results here. In late December, the soon-to-be-formed Heavy Medal Award Committee (HMAC) will begin discussing the 12-15 titles on our Heavy Medal Book List (HMBL). But first, we need to figure out what those books will be. Emily and I will make the final decisions on that list, but we count heavily on the input of Heavy Medal readers, which is why we’re inviting you to take our Narrow-It-Down Poll, which is open now and closes on Saturday, December 9^th at 5:00 pm PST.  Here’s where we are so far in our process towards the HBML:

• We already picked 6 titles, and explained our thinking  about those in this earlier post. Those titles are: ALEBRIJES;  EB AND FLOW;  THE EYES AND THE IMPOSSIBLE;  THE LOST YEAR;  THE MANY ASSASSINATIONS OF SAMIR, THE SELLER OF DREAMS;  and THE MONA LISA VANISHES.
• To fill out the rest of the list, we’ll look at nomination totals for sure, but rather than just picking the top titles from that list, Emily and I will try to balance the list in terms of genres, age levels, and other areas. 
• We’ve put a bunch of nominated titles into categories and ask readers to choose one from each category. We won’t necessarily include one or more from any of these categories…they just help organize the process.
• And maybe the categories don’t quite fit…do robots really make SUPERTEACHER PROJECT and DOGTOWN science fiction? Does it make sense to put PATTERNS EVERYWHERE in with IMPOSSIBLE ESCAPE? Maybe not, but that’s what we’ll work with.
• If you have any additional thoughts on the final list, anything from a final plea in support of a really great book to broader ideas about how the list should be constructed, please share those in the comments below.
• Remember to fill out the poll by December 9^th. Email addresses are required to make sure we just get one vote per person.
• Emily and I will look at the results of the poll, review the nominations list, and argue with each other engage in calm and rational discussions until we come up with the final HMBL. We’ll reveal that list on December 13^th.
•  The call for volunteers to join the Heavy Medal Award Committee will go out here on Heavy Medal on Friday, December 8^th. We shared some details about that process on an earlier post and will have more on Friday.

Filed under: Heavy Medal Mock, Process