Summary
Join us for the 2025 Media Madness Children's Picture Book Tournament! Media Madness is an annual bracket-style tournament where students and educators vote on their favorite children's picture books. The goal is to promote literacy, spark excitement about reading, and engage young readers in a fun, interactive way. Each round, books face off until a single champion is crowned!
Media Madness 2025: Children’s Picture Book Tournament
Central Rivers AEA Media Department is thrilled to invite you to participate in the 2025 Media Madness Children’s Picture Book Tournament! If you were part of the 2024 tournament, you know how much fun this event can be. Last year’s winning Picture Book was This Way, Charlie by Caron Levis. Now, it’s time to gear up for another exciting year!
What is Media Madness?
Media Madness is an annual bracket-style tournament where students and educators vote on their favorite children’s picture books. The goal is to promote literacy, spark excitement about reading, and engage young readers in a fun, interactive way. Each round, books face off until a single champion is crowned!
What You Need to Know
- Tournament Dates: March-April 2025
- Flyer: 2025 Media Madness Tournament
- Registration Link: 2025 Media Madness: Registration
Key Dates & Next Steps
Tournament Materials
For those who would like a blank poster-size tournament bracket (which can be reused in future years), we are offering them for purchase. The bracket will come with picture cards for this year’s books. However, you can still participate without purchasing a bracket! A Google form will be sent to all registered participants.
- Week of February 24: A teacher’s packet with additional details will be emailed to all registered participants.
- March 10: The first-round voting form will be sent via email.
- March 14: First-round voting closes.
Questions?
If you have any questions or need access to the links, feel free to reach out. We are excited for another fantastic tournament and can’t wait to see which book emerges as this year’s champion!
Read across Iowa challenge is the month of March
In honor of National Read Across America Day on March 2, Central Rivers AEA Media Services invites you to participate in a Read Across Iowa Challenge. The goal is for each classroom and student to log as many reading minutes as possible during March. This exciting initiative promotes a love for reading and literacy while fostering a sense of community among classrooms across Iowa. If you have not participated in this challenge, find a brief overview below or read the full summary.
Challenge Period: Log minutes from March 1-31. Minutes must be submitted by April 5.
Goal: Log as many reading minutes as possible. We hope to surpass 1 million minutes this March! Prizes are awarded to students and classrooms with the most minutes logged!
How to Participate: Encourage your students to log reading minutes during classtime, free reading, partner reading, and the minutes they read at home. They can access titles in the school libraries, and teachers can check out book sets from the AEA, or students and families can access digital eBooks for free through AEA digital resources like MackinVIA, Learn 360, or PebbleGo.
Last year, we witnessed an incredible achievement, with 801,706 reading minutes logged by 1,255 students. This year, we’re setting our sights even higher and aiming to reach 1 million reading minutes! We believe that together, we can create an engaging and inspiring reading experience for students.
For more information, please reach out to Angie Dickey in Media. Let’s make the 2024 Read Across Iowa Challenge a tremendous success and come together to celebrate the joy of reading!