The Young Adult Library Services Association announced that Seth Cassel was the 2008 YALSA/Sagebrush Corporation Award winner for his website, Flamingnet Book Reviews. The Sagebrush Award is designed to honor a member(s) of the Young Adult Library Services Association who has developed an outstanding reading or literature program for young adults. The award is made possible through an annual grant from the Sagebrush Book Company, a division of The American Companies.

Seth was also invited to speak about Flamingnet at the 2008 Annual American Library Associaton Meeting in Anaheim, California (June 2008). Seth discussed Flamingnet Book Reviews and the Flamingnet student reviewer program as part of a series of presentations dealing with the use of technology as a form of outreach to teenagers.

YALSA Press Release

The mission of the State of Maryland International Reading Association Council is to improve the level of literacy in the State of Maryland.

Seth is the youngest recipient of the SoMIRAC Media Award. This award was presented to him at the annual SoMIRAC meeting in April 2008 for his work on Flamingnet Book Reviews. Seth also gave a presentation about Flamingnet to the Board of Directors of SoMIRAC outlining how his website is currently promoting reading among young adults across the country, as well as in Maryland.

SoMIRAC Home Page

"Seth Cassel, 17, of Towson, Md., a junior at McDonogh School in Owings Mills, created and maintains a Website that promotes reading among young people by posting book reviews written by him and other students across the country. Flamingnet.com currently features more than 1,100 reviews of books for teens, preteens, and young adults."

The Prudential Spirit of Community Awards honor young people in middle level and high school grades for outstanding volunteer service to their communities. Created in 1995 by Prudential Financial in partnership with the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP), the awards constitute the United States' largest youth recognition program based solely on volunteering. Over the past 13 years, the program has honored more than 80,000 young volunteers at the local, state, and national level.

For recognition as a teen social entrepreneur

"Congrats! You are a Plum Youth Grant Winner! I want to congratulate you for all that you’re doing to promote youth literacy. You are really making a difference and we are happy to be able to present you with a Plum Youth Grant."

All the best,
Jordyn Wells
Do Something Clubs and Grants
www.dosomething.org

The President's Council on Service and Civic Participation created the President's Volunteer Service Award program as a way to thank and honor Americans who, by their demonstrated commitment and example, inspire others to engage in volunteer service.

Recognizing and honoring volunteers sets a standard for service to others. It encourages a sustained commitment to civic participation and inspires others to make volunteering a central part of their lives. The President's Volunteer Service Award recognizes individuals, families, and groups that have achieved a certain standard – measured by the number of hours served over a 12-month period or cumulative hours earned over the course of a lifetime.

Visit Seth's Guest Blog

"I think what you are doing with your site is wonderful, and the goal is worthwhile."

"Within each of us is a bard or sage struggling to find a voice. At Bards and Sages, we hope to free the inner bard in both our readers and fellow writers."

"We'd like to offer some free help to raise awareness for your site."

Sincerely,
Julie Ann Dawson
Bards and Sages

"After looking around your site we at Books-and-Authors.net was very impressed and would like to award you with our Books-And-Authors.net Literary Award for Excellence-"

"It's not every day, we in the literary industry on the net checkout out the good work that others are doing to spread literacy."

Sincerely,
John Weaver, owner
Books-And-Authors.net

"Congratulations! "Flamingnet" was reviewed in my "Surfing the Net with Kids" newspaper column. "Surfing the Net with Kids" is syndicated by United Feature Syndicate, and appears in many papers across the U.S.including San Diego Union-Tribune and The Boston Globe."
Sincerely,
Barbara J. Feldman
Syndicated Columnist "Surfing the Net with Kids"

Michael Starz's Award of Excellence Program was established to act as a motivation for homepages with high quality and good content. He uses the award to promote private, non-professional, personal homepages which represent a high standard or which try to reach this standard.

"Congratulations! An interesting site with much information - for sure an important resource in the web for all interested visitors and one can see that you spent a lot of effort for all that book reviews. Design, quality, content and function are o.k. - well done!"
Michael

Excellence on the Internet means building a Learning Fountain that influences visitors by helping them learn.

"Congratulations! Your site is now a LEARNING FOUNTAIN. The Learning Fountain is not so much an award as it is a statement of the way you do business."
Paul Siegel

"I love the premise of your website, bringing books to those who may not have access to them. I applaud your ingenuity, and I am thrilled to tell you that you earned our bronze awards."
Linda Smith
Penmaric's Rexcellence Site Award

The Lynx Award was established to recognize Webmasters that build exceptional sites on the internet. Those Webmasters that demonstrate that they have put their "heart and soul" into the building of their site. Awarding the site builder for originality,creativity,design,layout, ease of navigation,attitude, and graphics. A site that expresses the inner feelings of the designer.

"Congratulations! Your site has been chosen as a Silver Award Winner of The Lynx Award. I truly enjoyed visiting your site. It is evident that you have put a lot of hard work into your site. It is an honour to present the Lynx Award to you.
Best Regards,"
DJ

The Poetic Soul Award Program recognizes website builders that have built a nice site on the web, with emphasis on content, design and navigation. Your site should also be friendly to everyone. This award program was created to reward good sites creators and to get people to visit my site.

"Your website won the Poetic Soul Silver Award for its nice design and very interesting content, well done!"
Lupércio Mundim

The purpose of ThiatraCat Awards is to acknowledge dedication, effort, and commitment to excellence in the world in web design.

"We've had a chance to visit your site, and we were really impressed by the work you've done. It's clear you've devoted a substantial amount of time and dedication to your work. Your site is excellent."
"We are pleased to present you with ThiatraCat's Silver Award of Excellence. You've most definitely earned it."
Be Well,
Thia, Cat and Fay
From the Province of ThiatraCat

"CLL Website Awards" is intended for educational, personal, non-commercial (small-business of a couple of persons or a family may apply) or service sites. I'm giving priority to educational sites and sites with Internet-related services. The purpose of this award is, for my part, distribute encouragement to good mission and knowledge in Internet and Award communities by rewarding excellent web sites with an award."

"I'm pleased by announcing, that your site "Flamingnet Book Reviews" is a Bronze Award winner of my "CLL Website Awards". Also, thank you very much for inviting me to evaluate your excellent site with so rich and versatile content of book reviews for all ages with several userfriendly features: interactive reviews, bulletin board, blog etc. Navigation is relevant and exhaustive. Pages are proper-sized with high consistency. Backgrounds, fonts and graphics are well selected lending support to a harmonious whole. In its entirety your site is very pleasant to visit."
With best regards,
Juhani Kerkkonen
WECP Certified Evaluator

The StormKeeper Award was established to recognize websites which show excellence in design,origniality and effort in construction. We strive to recognize the hard work,ingenuity,uniqueness and integrety of the web site owner.

"Your site has been chosen as a winner of The StormKeeper for this month. It was a pleasure to visit your site. you have a great site. There is only one award, no bronze,silver,gold--so to receive this award your site must be exceptional."
"My warm regards,"
Iceman

The purpose of this award program is to honor those websites with educational and resource value that distinguish among the others in both graphics and information accuracy, and give us such a special experience visiting them so to become our favorite bookmarks and a constant source of entertaining and information.

"Congratulations."
"Your website has been thoroughly evaluated and I'm glad to announce it was selected to win one of the most coveted awards in the world, the BTDesign APPROVED Award, a sign of recognition for websites which make surfing a different experience."
"Keep up with your important work!"
Barbara (BTDesign)