Hop over to the Cybils site for a list of wonderful books. The Cybils criteria include both kid appeal and literary merit. Most other awards focus on one or the other. Cybils are unique in lots of ways, and each year’s shortlists are a resource you should take advantage of. The categories include poetry, nonfiction, early readers, picture books, fiction at various age levels, poetry, even book apps (new this year).
As you know, this year I served on the first-round panel for graphic novels. Our task was to create two shortlists: middle-grade and young adult. They are strong lists: some incredible books there. Do check them out. The second-round judges selected one winner from each list: for middle-grade, the delightful Zita the Spacegirl (an enormous hit with my middle bunch, especially Beanie), and for young adult, the smart, absorbing, highly original Anya’s Ghost. Congrats to Ben Hatke (Zita) and Vera Brosgol (Anya)—and congrats to all our finalists for making such splendid books.
Among the other winners, my bunch has read and LOVED, in the read-it-again-again-again kind of love (or wead-it-adain, if you’re Huck), the early reader champ, I Broke My Trunk—another Mo Willems Elephant and Piggie gem. And the winning book app, the 21st-century incarnation of that enduring classic, The Monster at the End of This Book (starring lovable, furry old Grover), is, I can attest, an excellent way to experience a perfectly marvelous book. As for the fiction picture book winner, Me…Jane, oh what a lovely book! The young life of Jane Goodall and her stuffed chimpanzee. Hats off to Patrick McDonnell.
I’ve been trying to catch up my GoodReads log, but with all these graphic novels I’m reading for Cybils, it’s hard to keep it up to date. November’s list is too long to recreate here, but I’ll call out a few of my favorite reads from the month.
I keep calling this Trollville by accident because of the (perfectly delicious) subtitle: “Yet another troll-fighting 11-year-old Orthodox Jewish girl.” Middle-grade graphic novel published by Amulet Books. Enchanted Beanie and me. Mirka wants to fight monsters but gets entangled with a foul-tempered talking pig instead. Her sometimes comical, often hair-raising adventures occur in the context of a full, tradition-centered home life. I love books that mingle the small, gritty challenges of daily life with grand, fantastic adventures—but maybe you already knew that about me?
This is the gift to give your 8-12-year-old nephew or niece if you want the Coolest Uncle Ever award. Or Coolest Aunt. Whichever. An aging superhero announces that he is holding auditions for a new sidekick. His pets, who miss his company, decide to try out. His pets? Are a dog, a hamster, and a lizard. That’s right. The hamster is trying out for the superhero sidekick gig. It’s equal parts heartwarming and hilarious. And the art just knocked—my—socks—off.
This book is really special. It’s a memoir in words and pictures. Allen Say recounts the story of his life with poignant candor. At age twelve, he goes to Tokyo to live alone (!) in order to attend a good school. His tiny one-room apartment has everything young Allen needs: solitude and a desk he can draw at. In a move full of gumption, he approaches a renowned cartoonist and asks to train under him. Amazing story. Beanie’s read it at least three times now.
So far, I’ve read 19 of the 76 titles—most of them in the Fiction Picture Book and YA Fiction categories, the former because I have three picture-book-devouring younguns at the moment (and some of their big sisters have been known to listen in), the latter because I was part of the panel that drew up the list. We’re doing pretty well with the beginning readers, too; there’s another batch arriving for us at the library any day now.
Since we’ve now had the pleasure of reading all seven books on the fiction picture book shortlist, I thought I’d do a little roundup here.
Rilla and I are in love. What a sweet, gentle, quirky story. Amos is an elderly fellow who works at the zoo, where he always makes time to visit with his friends. Chess with elephant, a race with tortoise, a quiet moment shared with a shy penguin. When Amos stays home sick one day, his animal pals (and a floating red balloon) set off to find him. Rilla giggled the whole way through this lovely, quiet book. “Again, again!” she begged the moment we finished. The second time through, she lingered over the pictures, murmuring over winsome details. It was this year’s Caldecott Winner, and I see why. The art is delicate and sweetly atmospheric, and full of tiny surprises. I’ll be giving this one as a gift, often and often.
Fantastic. A chicken lass can’t help but chime in when the stories her Papa’s reading get tense. Papa keeps trying new fairy tales—Hansel and Gretel, Chicken Little, Little Red Riding Hood—in hopes the little red chicken will settle down and get sleepy, but every time the story gets rolling, the energetic chick catapults herself into the tale and warns the main characters before they stray into danger. Wonderfully funny and absolutely true to life (except, of course, that they’re chickens). 2010 Caldecott Honor book and the winner of the CYBIL in this category.
Here’s the book trailer if you’d like a peek between the pages:
Gregory’s dad tells him not to go into the water, and not to stray too far away from the lion Greg has drawn in the sand. Gregory draws the lion’s tale longer and longer, veering around a jellyfish and a horseshoe crab, swooping over an old sandcastle and beyond. When he realizes Dad is lost in the mass of beach umbrellas, Gregory follows Sandy Lion’s tail back to its body—and there’s Dad, watching all the while. Gorgeous art and simple text; both Rilla and Wonderboy took a real fancy to this one. Just now, as I was writing this, Rilla peered over my shoulder at the cover and asked if we could get it back from the library.
I’ve already written about the other four Cybils picture book finalists here, but I’ll paste those notes in this post just to keep them all in one place.
Jiminy crickets, what art! Amazing expressions on the kids, especially when they’re running in terror from the T Rex…Rilla and Wonderboy were transfixed by this one. The magic of chalk that brings drawings to life, the dramatic turn of events, the clever solution. A wordless story, which is something Rilla always enjoys.
Silly, funny, sweet. Very satisfying for Rilla and Wonderboy. A rollicking rhymed text that isn’t torture to read, and the joke at the end went over big. (From this post on Jan. 30, 2011.)
Rilla and I were quite surprised to find ourselves and Huck in the opening pages of this book. I mean, really, it’s like Matt Phelan was peeking in the window. A charming story, quite appealing to the four-year-old big sister in this household. (She wouldn’t let Huck blow away either.) Flora is frustrated when baby brother Crispin gets into the paints and ruins Flora’s picture. Their frazzled mama sends them outside to play, despite Flora’s protests that the wind is too strong and will blow them away. Sure enough, a hearty gust scoops Crispin into the sky, and Flora must abandon her boots and go rescue him. Seems every high-flying creature in the big blue and beyond wants to claim Crispin—who is, admittedly, utterly irresistible in that long-tasseled hat—for a helper. Dragonfly, sparrow, eagle, rainbow, cloud, even the moon! Flora’s exchanges with these entities quite enchanted my Rilla. And my goodness, Matt Phelan’s art just blew me away.
A perfect picture book, I tweeted the day I read it. “A perfect marriage of art and text” is a reviewer’s cliche but by golly it’s no overstatement in this case. Two little boys run for a toybox and brandish their selections in triumph and challenge. Shark vs. train—who wins? It depends…what’s the competition? Pie-eating? Diving? Marshmallow roasting? The stakes keep escalating, to hilarious effect. Rilla and Wonderboy sit and pore over the art, which is sharp and comic and enchanting. I find myself wishing my nephews and nieces hadn’t all grown up so much: this would be my birthday book of choice this year. (From this post in September 2010.)
September 30, 2010 @ 7:16 am | Filed under: Books, Cybils
Regular readers of this blog know I am afflicted with option paralysis when it comes to Choosing the Next Book. For the next three months, that won’t be a problem. Nominations for the Children’s & Young Adult Bloggers’ Literary Awards (CYBILs) begin at midnight Eastern time on October 1st—that’s 9pm tonight for us West Coast folks! I’m a first-round judge for YA Fiction, which means that between now and the end of the year, my reading list will consist of the book you nominate in that category.
We’re kicking off the two-week nomination period with a Twitter party tonight, 12am Eastern time. Follow @cybils on Twitter for more on that! (You do not have to have a Twitter account to follow to the conversation.)
I’m delighted to have a spot on the 1st-round panel for YA fiction. Our task will be to read all nominated books in our category and narrow them down to a shortlist of, usually, 5-7 titles. You know how I feel about booklists. I adore a shortlist. Picking one winner out of a small group of contenders? Agonizing! But getting to share my enthusiasm for a select handful of books among dozens and dozens of hopefuls? Bliss. So I’m really thrilled to be participating in the CYBILs judging again this year. I served on the 1st-round panel for Fiction Picture Books in 2008, and I loved the whole intense, spirited process. Reading all the nominees (including reading many of them to my younger children), pondering the merits of the books I liked best, and discussing those fine books with the other 1st-round panelists—it was a fantastic experience.
(It’s fun to look back at that shortlist and see how many of those books, especially Big Bad Bunny and A Visitor for Bear are still in regular read-aloud demand here.)
Here are this year’s YA Fiction panelists, rounds 1 and 2, with links to our blogs and Twitter pages:
I’m looking forward to some lively discussions in the months to come—and a whole heckuva lot of reading, of course. Start thinking about your favorite young adult books from the past year and be sure to nominate them between October 1st and 15th. You might want to subscribe to the CYBILs feed or follow @cybils on Twitter for updates.
“Well, if you like your warnings ahead of time, then I’d say watch out for weasels and the Banshee—the Lost Soul of the Lost and Found—and a lot of other Cursed Creatures. Hmmm, and let’s see…the mice come in waves. And if you hear hooves coming behind you, crouch down. It’s the Pooka, and it won’t be a good ride if he grabs you.”
—The Prince of Fenway Park
In the early 90s, Julianna Baggott and I were classmates in the MFA Writing Program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, along with David Scott (whom Julianna would later marry) and a number of other fine poets and fiction writers. (To name a few: Rowan Jacobsen, author of that bee book I raved about; his future wife, the poet and illustrator Mary Elder; poet Elizabeth Leigh Hadaway; novelist Quinn Dalton; Pulitzer-Prize-winning poet Claudia Emerson; and acclaimed speculative fiction writer Kelly Link. We all got to study with the great Fred Chappell, making us some of the luckiest people on the planet.)
I’m always excited to hear that one of my friends has a new book out—especially when it’s Julianna. She is a writer of tremendous talent: a poet whose keen-edged phrases can make my breath catch in my throat, a spinner of magical children’s tales, a novelist who writes with an intense and lyrical candor. She has a gift for drawing her characters with a terrible honesty suffused with tenderness and a kind of raw humor. Her people are real people, aching and vulnerable and brave.
It’s no surprise, then, that Julianna’s 2009 middle-grade novel, The Prince of Fenway Park, made this year’s Cybils shortlist for Middle Grade Fantasy and Science Fiction. Her latest novel, The Ever Breath, has just come out and I am champing at the bit for a copy. As N. E. Bode, she wrote the deliciously original The Anybodies, The Nobodies, and The Slippery Map. Her novels for adults include Girl Talk, The Miss America Family, The Madam, and (as Bridget Asher) The Pretend Wife and My Husband’s Sweethearts. She has published three collections of poetry: This Country of Mothers, Lizzie Borden in Love, and Compulsions of Silkworms and Bees. Julianna and Dave and their four children live in Florida, where Julianna is an associate professor in FSU’s creative writing program.
Because talking about writing with other writers is one of my favorite things to do, I asked Julianna if I could bombard her with questions for an interview here at Bonny Glen. She said yes, and here it is.
I am always wildly curious to know how other writers work. What’s your writing life like—the rhythm of your days and weeks, with writing and mothering and working and researching and all the rest of it?
I stay up late at night. My husband wakes up early in the morning. He’s a stay at home dad—the hardworking kind who’s really taken over all of it (grocery shopping, cooking, carpooling). So he does the morning rush, getting the oldest three off to school. I sleep in with the 2 year old. We have sitters who come and stay a couple of morning hours so Dave and I can both focus. We wrestle the calendar and the business side of writing and the creative side, too. When I’m stuck, I ramble to Dave and he blathers and eventually he blathers something that helps. I sometimes have teaching days—I teach in the Creative Writing Program at Florida State—or departmental meetings with professorial types—of which I guess I am one—and I try to come up for air around 3:30 when the kids come home. Sometimes I head back to work at night. And on my bedside table there’s always a stack of reading—books to blurb or grad student novels, etc… And then the day begins again—another version of the same.
We are like Civil War reenactors—except without the woolly pants and cannons.
Tell me about your writing process: How you work, where you work. Do you work on one book at a time, or do you have several projects going simultaneously? Do you pour out a first draft and then go back over (and over?), or do you write slowly, polishing as you go? How many drafts before you show someone? Who are your first readers?
I collect notes for various projects that are coming up in metal bins on my VERY messy desk. When that project pops up, I map on big sheets of art books—big wild outlines that I accept as THE plotline although it ALWAYS changes many, many times. Sometimes I juggle more than one book. If one fights me, I jump to another. I also will work in small essays and op-eds from time to time. I’ve been in Real Simple, The New York Times, Boston Globe…I also will shove a poem in from time to time—poems come in waves—
Like the mice under Fenway Park?
Yes. Like the mice. In waves, followed by dry spells—more emotional than logical for me. I adore revision—more and more the older I get. More freedom in a way. I write on scraps of paper that float around the house and get lost. I write all over certain books—a real marginalia freak. Some books are fairly smooth in writing the first drafts. Others are like wrestling gators. The problem is that you don’t know which is which until you’re in too deep. I can’t think in terms of drafts as I move throughout the novel as I write it—back and forth and all around. My first reader is Dave though there are certain novels he doesn’t read until they’re published, and I don’t read to him necessarily in order. I might start reading to him in the spot where I’m stuck—say page 64. I summarize and tell him my problem and read. It’s great because I’m all caught up in the details accumulated over the past 64 pages, but he isn’t. He can see the book as some platonic future version of itself and his suggestions can be really broad and drastic, often what I need to hear.
See, this is one of the things I love so much about you and Dave, because it’s one of the things I love so much about Scott and me: the collaborativeness of the creative process. Nothing I write feels alive to me until he reads it.
Okay, when you’re deep into work on a novel, do you read other fiction? Nonfiction? Watch tv (and what!)? Movies? Swim? Rock climb? Mario Kart marathons with Dave?
When asked if I have hobbies, I answer: I like to sing along to the radio in the car, loudly. Does that count? Hardly. But I do get up from novels a lot. I get up and pick seeds from the Cosmos. I cut apples. I get in the car and sing loudly. I have to walk away and then come back—away and back. I love stupid TV. I hate swimming. I make myself pay for peeking at my Amazon ranks/reviews by doing push ups.
Do you get stuck in your head/have trouble shaking off the world of the book? Any transition processes? Scott and I call it coming out of the cave—that place you enter when the work is working.
I try not to fully shake the other world. I like the blending—how one world helps me with the other.
Do your kids read your works in progress, or do you make them wait until story’s done? I remember you said Phoebe pointed out that your first draft of Anybodies happened almost totally “in rooms”—such a sharp insight.
I used to read aloud to my kids as I wrote, but it got too confusing. I kept changing things on them. And now, strangest of all, they don’t read my work. I’d have never seen that coming. But it’s as if too much of me as an author filters down into our daily lives. They want me as mother. And so we don’t blur mother as writer. They love the authors they love as authors. But I’m their mother and that relationship is something we all have decided to keep oddly pure. Does this make any sense? It’s not something we planned. But when we read a novel as a group, it’s never mine.
You have published under the pseudonyms N. E. Bode and Bridget Asher as well as your real name. How did that come about?
I’d written three literary novels in three years—pubbed with Simon & Schuster. It was too fast a pace. I started competing with myself for review space. So we decided on writing under a pen name. My agent wanted me to do crime novels—I get terrified playing the board game CLUE —but I was reading again to my kids the books I first loved.
So I decided on that. N.E. Bode followed.
Then my kid book editor wanted me to come out as Julianna Baggott and the timing felt right. My two recent novels The Prince of Fenway Park and The Ever Breath are Baggott novels.
As for Bridget Asher, I wanted to be able to build an audience in one kind of novel—smart, contemporary work for women—but still have the freedom to write my own odd stuff as Baggott and not lose the readership I’d built.
So Asher seemed like a good way to do that.
Let’s talk about The Prince of Fenway Park. A question I always have about every book is “what’s the story behind the story”—what sparked the idea, etc. And then I’m always curious about the research. Did you get to tour Fenway Park?
Funny story. The Prince of Fenway Park came out of complete frustration. I was having a conversation with Dave. I had finished a laborious collection of poetry in historic women’s voices (Lizzie Borden in Love). It entailed huge doses of research. I said to Dave, “Can’t I write a book that I already know something about? Or you? What do you already know?”
He said, “I know the Red Sox.”
I didn’t want to write baseball book. I write magical novels—not realism and certainly not sports realism. But then I said, “Wait, there was a curse on the Red Sox. It was reversed. This could be the story of the boy who did it!” It came to me all at once. Dave and I sat there for a while, saying, “There was a curse. It was reversed and this is the boy who did it.”
The irony? Well, the book entailed tons of research. Dave knew Fenway Park, but the exact mix of grass in the outfield? Did he know the history of Pumpsie Green? Bill Buckner’s childhood?
Dave, of course, volunteered to do a lot of the research. In fact, he was the one who toured Fenway stem to stern. He considered it a gift. He went behind the Green Monster and stood on the pitcher’s mound—took notes, snapped pictures. For a while, everything in our house revolved around the Red Sox, and the dining-room table was littered with baseballs, taken apart to see what exactly was inside.
Now for some questions about your reading life. What are you reading right now? Are you a rereader? Do you and Dave swap books or read aloud to each other? How about family readalouds?
I’m not a rereader. I’m not a rewatcher. It pains me to watch a film—even one I love—twice. I do it from time to time. But it’s hard. I’m reading Vonnegut and Leslie Epstein now—both on World War II—when I’m not socked in by student work, which I am. Atwood visits in spring so I’ll be on her latest book soon. Haven’t yet read the new Lorrie Moore. Must. We have done a lot of family read alouds, but not recently.Our age range is difficult right now for consensus— high school, middle school, elementary and toddler. I was a big Ramona and Beatrice fan, and Fudge, of course, and Dahl and I loved Sherlock Holmes and saw tons of plays as a kid—I loved Mamet way too young.
Back to your writing. Tell me about The Ever Breath.
There was once just one world—this one. And it was home to all the magical and un-magical creatures. (This was way back. This world itself was still pretty new …) But then there was an Exodus. Two worlds were formed—the Fixed World of un-magical creatures, this world we know, and the Breath World, where all of the magical creatures were sent off to. And there are these two kids—brother and sister, Truman and Camille—who find themselves on an adventure that takes them through the passage and into the Breath World where they must find the EVER BREATH—an amber orb with a breathing breath within it. They have to save not just one world but both worlds …
I’m at work on the sequel, The Ever Cure, right now.
Excellent. I can’t wait. Thanks so much, Julianna, for dropping by the Bonny Glen!
As a member of the first-round judging panel for Fiction Picture Books, I was happy to see that my favorite title from our shortlist, How to Heal a Broken Wing, won in that category.
And I’m tickled to see that the winner of the Nonfiction Middle Grade/Young Adult category is a book by a friend of mine: The Year We Disappeared: A Father-Daughter Memoir by Cylin Busby and John Busby. Cylin and I were lowly editorial assistants together at Random House many years ago. I’m so proud of her. (Good thing I wasn’t a panelist for that category—I’d have had to recuse myself.) I’ve been dying to read her book: I finally have a copy on the way, so more on that later.
While you’re over at the Cybils blog checking out the winners, don’t miss Easy Reader winner Mo Willems’s illustrated thank-you note!
What a charmer this picture book is. Scores very high on the giggle-meter with my gang. Jumpy Jack is a snail of the most nervous sort. As lovably neurotic anthropo-morphizations go, Jack’s right up there with Piglet, friend of Pooh. Fortunately, Jumpy Jack has his best friend Googily to put his mind to rest when the monster-worries creep in. Jack fears monsters are lurking at every turn—monsters with big round eyes and sharp teeth and lolling tongues and possibly even creepy bowler hats. Googily—he’s the amiable fellow in blue you see there—is a little puzzled by Jack’s boogieman complex, but he’s always happy to help soothe his pal’s fears by taking a peek into the corners Jack’s sure are hiding fearsome monsters.
In the end, we find that Googily has a fear of his own—and apparently with better reason than Jumpy Jack! The surprise ending elicited belly laughs from my seven- and two-year-olds.
I really love this sweet and simple picture book. It’s fresh and funny, and the art is enchanting, and the text holds up well to numerous re-readings, which is a quality I very much watch for in a young picture book. If I’m going to have to read it aloud five times a day, it’s got to be readable.
But beyond that, I appreciate the way the plot plays with the idea that people can create monsters in their minds, terrifying specters composed of stereotypes, while being oblivious to the fact that the generalizations they are throwing around so carelessly might very well include real people they know and love.
November 7, 2008 @ 7:38 am | Filed under: Family, Snippets
We have two ripe strawberries on our potted strawberry plant. It’s November. San Diego is a strange place to live after you’ve put in a couple of decades on the East Coast.
Wonderboy had an OT evaluation at the Children’s Hospital last month. I finally got the written report yesterday. It’s full of errors! I’ll have to write a list of corrections and ask for an updated report, because I don’t want inaccuracies in his file. Highly annoying.
But his IEP meeting earlier this week went wonderfully well. I think the school district finally has a read on who we are, this family of mine (especially the obnoxious, mouthy mama), and they’re meeting us where we are, now. Hooray. And oh how I love Wonderboy’s speech therapist. She really is a gem. And I’m not just saying that because yesterday she raved about the progress we’d made at home during the week and told me I should be a speech pathologist myself.
My second-favorite moment from the meeting: when, after listening to rest of the IEP team group-wrangle their statements into educationese for the Official Paperwork, I was asked to contribute the “parent goals” and I figured I’d save time by just uttering it in the IEP jargon to begin with. Moment of silence around the table, then they all burst out laughing. Me, grinning: “Did I nail it?” School district lady in charge of entering everything into the computer: “Say it again, just like that, so I can type it in.” Heh.
Favorite moment from the meeting: leaving, with my little boy’s hand in mine, and his eager voice saying, “We go home now? Go play with my tisters?”
Oh how I love that child.
On Monday, I sat down with a giant pile of picture books to read for the Cybils. Rose and Bean joined me, and we wound up sitting there for hours, reading book after book after book. Passing them around: Ooh, you’re going to love this one! (They know me well: they were right every time.) I’m going to have to write posts about some of them because there are some must-share gems in the stack. Next time you make a library run, look for Chester’s Back! by Melanie Watt. Even if you don’t have little kids. We were crying laughing, even the thirteen-year-old. Especially the thirteen-year-old. The Lucky Star and One Hen just plain made me cry. And Dinosaur vs. Bedtime? Rilla’s new Favorite Book Ever. Bet I read it six times yesterday alone. Roar!
Hop over to the Cybils site for a list of wonderful books. The Cybils criteria include both kid appeal and literary merit. Most other awards focus on one or the other. Cybils are unique in lots of ways, and each year’s shortlists are a resource you should take advantage of. The categories include poetry, nonfiction, early readers, picture books, fiction at various age levels, poetry, even book apps (new this year).
The 
