Archive for the ‘Cybils’ Category
February 16, 2017 @ 9:45 am | Filed under:
Books,
Cybils 
Did you catch the announcement on Tuesday? Here’s a list of the winners—happy reading!
The YA Fiction winner was Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys, which I raved about a few weeks ago.
The judges write:
This harrowing historical novel follows the lives of three young refugees seeking freedom and safety in East Prussia as World War II nears its end: Lithuanian Joana, a nurse burdened by guilt; pregnant, Polish Emilia; and Prussian Florian, a German army deserter carrying a valuable secret. A bumbling, delusional young Nazi soldier, Alfred, also narrates from aboard the doomed ship Wilhelm Gustloff—the eventual destination of the three protagonists and their small band of traveling companions. The ship, packed far beyond capacity with thousands of desperate refugees, is struck by Soviet torpedoes in the icy Baltic Sea. Joana, Emilia, Florian and the others must draw from their nearly tapped-out resilience as they try to survive the greatest maritime disaster in history.
Meticulously researched and brilliantly written, this stunning and devastating story will captivate readers. Sepetys shines a light into the everyday life of the citizens of Nazi Germany and the occupied areas, with many parallels to the modern-day refugee crisis. Each character has secrets that unfold gradually and converge with others in unexpected ways, showing the varied effects of war on the average person. The narrative voices are distinct, well-drawn, and, with the exception of Alfred (a vile coward who fulfills a necessary role), sympathetic. Even secondary characters, such as the Shoe Poet and the young orphan boy, are vivid and compelling. Tightly paced and filled with constant peril and action, the story moves quickly, with the rotating viewpoints and short chapters aiding in the momentum. Though the setting is one of overwhelming tragedy, the growing connections between the courageous travelers render the narrative less bleak. This powerful, haunting, and immensely readable novel has wide appeal. Readers will not soon forget Sepetys’s vivid characters or the story of the Wilhelm Gustloff.
We’ll be making our way through the picture book and other shortlists in the coming months. Always a highlight of my year.
This was my first year as a Category Chair. Quite an experience! I’m so impressed with the smarts and and dedication of my two judging panels. I’m already looking forward to next year. 🙂
October 13, 2016 @ 2:22 pm | Filed under:
Books,
Cybils
Only two more days until the end of the public nomination period for the 2016 Cybils Awards! If you haven’t nominated your favorite books of the year yet, please consider doing so. And if your picks have already been submitted by someone else, here’s a roundup of “wish lists” shared on the Cybils blog. (See the comments of that post for more category lists.)
Eligibility criteria refresher: Books must be published in the U.S. or Canada for the children’s or YA markets between 10/16/15 and 10/15/16. Full list of rules here, as well as a link to the nomination form.
The YA Fiction candidates (so far) can be found here. (Just remember you have to use the nomination form to submit your pick—you can’t just leave a comment on the post.) I’m pretty excited by this list of nominees, but there are some other eligible titles that haven’t been submitted yet. Here are some suggestions compiled our panelists:
Lucy and Linh by Alice Pung
With Malice by Eileen Cook
Last Seen Leaving by Caleb Roehrig
Beware That Girl by Teresa Toten
Firsts by Laurie Elizabeth Flynn
Ivory and Bone by Julie Eshbaugh
Girl Mans Up by M-E Girard
Rodent by Lisa J. Lawrence
Fifteen Lanes by SJ Laidlaw
Dan Vs. Nature by Don Calame
Scar Girl by Len Vlahos
Scarlett Epstein Hates It Here by Anna Breslaw
Our Chemical Hearts by Krystal Sutherland
The Year We Fell Apart by Emily Martin
Flannery by Lisa Moore
All the Feels by Danika Stone
Gena/Finn by Hannah Moskowitz and Kat Helgeson
Everyone We’ve Been by Sarah Everett
Holding Up the Universe by Jennifer Niven
The Last True Love Story by Brendan Kiely
My Kind of Crazy by Robin Reul
Thicker than Water by Kelly Fiore
Wanderlost by Jen Malone
You Know Me Well by Nina LaCour and David Levithan
A Week of Mondays by Jessica Brody
Summer of Supernovas by Darcy Woods
Aftermath by Clara Kensie
The Killer in Me by Margot Harrison
Something in Between by Melissa Cruz
City of Spies by Nina Berry
Look Past by Eric Devine
(Note: these are possibilities for the category I’m chairing, YA Fiction: realistic/historical. YA Speculative Fiction is a separate category, and you may nominate one book in each—and in all the other Cybils categories too.)
It’s time! It’s time! Head over to the Cybils Awards to nominate your favorite children’s and YA books published in the past year (between Oct. 16, 2015 and Oct. 15, 2016). You may nominate one book in each category, including YA Fiction, which I’m chairing this year.
Here’s the link: And… Go! Cybils Nominations are Open | Cybils Awards
September 8, 2016 @ 11:29 am | Filed under:
Books,
Cybils 
I’ve been involved with the Cybils (Children’s and Young Adult Bloggers Literary Awards) on and off for the past eleven years, serving multiple stints as a first-round panelist in Young Adult Fiction, Picture Books, Graphic Novels, and Book Apps. This year, after a decade of brilliant service, longtime YA Fic category chair Jackie Parker is stepping down, and I’ve been asked to fill her shoes. That means Cybils season begins early for me this year! The call for judges went out today and I’ll be reviewing applications for my category (realistic and historical YA Fiction; YA SFF is a separate category) as they roll in. I’m honored to be serving in this capacity and look forward to exploring the blogs, vlogs, and podcasts of YA panelist applicants.
There have been a few other changes in the Cybils this year, including the addition of board books to the Fiction Picture Books category; an expansion of Nonfiction into two age groups; and a new Audiobooks category (also with two age groups), which is very exciting! You can read all about these changes on the Cybils website.
I woke up this morning all kinds of excited because I knew the Cybils shortlist announcements would be live by the time I peeled my eyelids open here on the West Coast, and I’ve been bursting at the seams to share our YA Fiction finalists with you. These books, THESE BOOKS, you guys. So incredibly good. I am thrilled with our list, which we curated via exhaustive and exhausting reading and spirited debate these past two months. Here it is: CYBILs 2014 Finalists: Young Adult Fiction.
Now the funny part: I’d been squeeing about this list on Twitter for a good ten minutes before I settled down to check out the other categories. Imagine my surprise when I got to the Early Reader shortlist and saw Inch and Roly there!
2014 Finalists: Easy Readers & Early Chapter Books | Cybils Awards.
I’m beyond thrilled that Inch and Roly and the Sunny Day Scare is an Easy Reader finalist. I mean, lookit that list! Mo Willems is there!* Among other fabulous folks. I’m so happy. Knowing the challenge of being on the other side of the list—the difficult and sometimes wrenching decisions you make as a Round 1 panelist, whittling hundreds of nominees down into a tiny number of finalists—I’m deeply honored and immensely excited. A hearty congratulations to all the finalists, all around! And thanks to all the panelists who poured weeks of labor into the curation process.
*At this time I would like to issue a formal apology to the post-NYE exhausted teens I may have awakened with my shrieking. Ahem.
The Easy Reader finalists:
Extraordinary Warren: A Super Chicken by Sarah Dillard
Okay, Andy! by Maxwell Eaton
Clara and Clem Under the Sea by Ethan Long
Pigsticks and Harold and the Incredible Journey by Alex Milway
The Ice Cream Shop: A Steve and Wessley Reader by Jennifer Morris
Inch and Roly and the Sunny Day Scare by Melissa Wiley 🙂
My New Friend Is So Fun! (An Elephant and Piggie Book) by Mo Willems
Book descriptions here.
The YA Fiction finalists:
Gabi, A Girl in Pieces by Isabel Quintero
Girls Like Us by Gail Giles
I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson
When I Was the Greatest by Jason Reynolds
Pointe by Brandy Colbert
Book descriptions here.
To explore the shortlists in other categories, click here. You’ll probably want your library tab open before you begin. 😉
October 14, 2014 @ 2:52 pm | Filed under:
Books,
Cybils As soon as your category chair begins approving nominations, you’re on the library website, putting titles on hold like crazy. You’ll have barely two months to read dozens, maybe even hundreds (depending on your category), of books. The sooner they come rolling in from branches all across the county, the better.
I gave my branch librarians a heads-up to let them know I’d be reserving a tremendous lot of novels. Promised to stop in often to pick up new arrivals, so as not to overfill the hold shelves. “No worries,” they told me. “We’ll move ’em to the bottom shelf if we need to.” There’s an empty slice of shelf there, under the Last Name T-Z reserves.
I stopped by today expecting to find the P shelf squeezed full of my holds. Nope, although as usual P—, LYD (last name redacted) had a small handful of appealing titles awaiting her. I’m assuming she’s a she—Lydia? Lyddie? No idea, but for eight years I’ve been glimpsing her reserve books next to ours (PETERSON, SCO) on the shelf, and when it comes to books we are clearly such kindred spirits that I’ve been tempted to leave her a note in one of them. Except that might seem a little creepy. Whereas blogging about it totally isn’t weird at all. Ahem. MOVING ON.
Okay, so I’m expecting a bunch of books but they aren’t on the P shelf, and they aren’t on the spillover bottom shelf either. I run my (okay, Scott’s; I lose things) library card under the scanner next to the shelves, and it says I have 16 titles ready for pickup. I’m just about to track down a librarian when I spot the cardboard box on the floor.
Aha. Now we’re talking.
I just love my librarians. 🙂
P.S. Nominations close tomorrow. Here’s the link!
October 13, 2014 @ 6:08 pm | Filed under:
Books,
Cybils If you, like me, missed Kidlitcon this past weekend, Leila has a delicious recap & link roundup for you at Bookshelves of Doom. I haven’t been since 2010, the Minneapolis gathering, and I had many a pang of longing as the tweets and FB updates came rolling in. But it was delightful to see so many of my blog-pals having what was clearly a Very Good Time.
One reason I couldn’t be there is because I was engaged to speak at SCBWI-San Diego on Saturday. (The other reason is because I have a hundred children and am therefore Always Broke. You know how it is.) I’m happy to say my SCBWI talk seemed to go over very well. The topic was Middle-Grade and Chapter Books, two categories of children’s publishing I can speak about with considerable enthusiasm. What’s more fun than speaking to a full house about your very favorite books? The crowd was wonderful, with really smart questions afterward. The only thing that could have made it more fun would have been having the Kidlitcon crowd there. 🙂
Sunday felt amazingly luxurious: nothing was required of me but to read. This was convenient, as the nominee tally in my CYBILs category is currently 100 novels, with more contenders coming in every day. Only two more days, guys, until the public nomination period closes. People are starting to compile lists of worthy books that haven’t yet been nominated; you can find links to those posts here.
Speaking of piles of books, the younger set and I finished The Boxcar Children over the weekend (it’s a mighty quick read) and today it fell upon to me choose the next readaloud. Sometimes I know EXACTLY what book I want to reach for next, and other times I have option paralysis. Today was the latter sort of occasion. I got Rose to go around the house with me, pulling likely candidates off shelves, and when we had a comfortable stack, I decided on a Jane-Rose-Beanie favorite, Rowan of Rin. Chapter one was well received. I’ve never read this one aloud before, and there’s always a risk—some great books just don’t make great readalouds. But so far, so good. So gripping!
It’s that time of year again: Cybils Award season. The judge announcements went out this morning. I’m delighted to be serving on the First-Round panel for YA Fiction. My last stint on this panel was in 2010, aka The Year I Read a Million Books. (I’m sure it’s a TOTAL COINCIDENCE that that was also the year I began to need reading glasses.)
My appointment to this panel spurred me to make a move I’ve been considering for some time, which is to dust off my tumblr (again) and try using it for my YA-related content. I’ve got a new YA of my own coming out next year, and tumblr seems a better fit for connecting with teen readers. I’ll add a link to the sidebar, or if that topic interests you enough to want to follow it in a feed reader, here’s the RSS. (I also use tumblr for reposting interesting articles and art I’ve come across, so fair warning.)
Disclaimer: I consider all platform changes to be experimental until they’ve proven themselves convenient, so this may or may not be a long-term shift. I just really like keeping things in different boxes. But if you’ve seen my garage, you know there usually comes a point where I get annoyed by the clutter and dump everything into one big container. (Believe me, you don’t want to see my garage.)
I believe this post may have set a new record for ending paragraphs with parentheticals. (Yeehah!)
