David Booth Children’s and Youth Poetry Award

The David Booth Children’s and Youth Poetry Award was established in 2022 to recognize excellence in Canadian children’s and youth poetry. The award honours David Booth, former Professor Emeritus in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning at the University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), who passed away in December 2018. The biennial award is a cash prize of $3,500 and is sponsored by David’s colleague and dear friend Shelley Stagg Peterson.

David had over 60 years of experience in the education field—as classroom teacher, consultant, professor, researcher, speaker and author. In addition to authoring teacher reference books and textbooks, he also wrote children’s poetry and was a champion for using poetry in the classroom.

“Poets are wordsmiths, spending their lives choosing, bending, shaping, teasing, playing with words. The sounds of language fascinate them so. Poets write words that make your ears sing.”—David Booth, Til All the Stars Have Fallen: Canadian Poems for Children (Kids Can Press, 1989)

To contribute to the David Booth Children’s and Youth Poetry fund, click here.