Over 24-thousand Louisiana K-12 students read more than 82-thousand books last year to vote for the 2024-2025 Louisiana Readers’ Choice Award. State Librarian Meg Placke says this marks a surge in participation, especially among 6th-8th graders, with an 88-percent voting increase.
“Which is awesome because I have a middle schooler myself and getting them to read is very, very difficult to do.”
Placke says each year, committees of teachers and librarians compile a list of fiction and nonfiction books.
“Things that they think the kids are reading. this is what they like to see, or maybe here we can put these books in front of them and get them excited about reading.”
Since its inception 26 years ago, the program has engaged students with over 1.5 million books read and nearly 485,000 votes cast. Placke says the program continues to grow…
“So, we are very excited to see we had such an increase, and there was maybe a slight decrease for third through fifth, but across the board on all others we saw major increases.”
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