Over at ALA and YALSA the lists have gone up. Best Books for Young Adults, Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers, Great Graphic Novels for Teens and the Children’s Notable Books have been announced and, unsurprisingly, a number of CYBILS nominees are on the lists. Some of them are even on multiple lists, reflecting their category-bending status.
–Kelly Fineman, Poetry organizer
Best Books for Young Adults (top ten picks have an asterisk):
*The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
*The Arrival by Shaun Tan
Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale
Boy Toy by Barry Lyga
Miss Spitfire: Reaching Helen Keller by Sarah Miller
The Off Season by Catherine Gilbert Murdock
Red Glass by Laura Resau
Repossessed by A.M. Jenkins
*Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy
The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain by Peter Sís
The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt
*Your Own, Sylvia: A Verse Portrait of Sylvia Plath by Stephanie Hemphill
Children’s Notable Books
The Arrival by Shaun Tan
The Chicken-Chasing Queen of Lamar County by Janice N. Harrington, illustrated by Shelley Jackson
Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!: Voices from a Medieval Village by Laura Amy Schlitz, illustrated by Robert Byrd
Here’s a Little Poem: A Very First Book of Poetry ed. by Jane Yolen and Andrew Fusek Peters, illustrated by Polly Dunbar
Knuffle Bunny Too: A Case of Mistaken Identity by Mo Willems
Lightship by Brian Floca
Marie Curie: Giants of Science #4 by Kathleen Krull
One Thousand Tracings: Healing the Wounds of World War II by Lita Judge
Robot Dreams by Sara Varon
Tasting the Sky: A Palestinian Childhood by Ibtisam Barakat
Tracking Trash: Flotsam, Jetsam and the Science of Ocean Motion by Lorree Griffin Burns
Vulture View by April Pulley Sayre, illustrated by Steven Jenkins
The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain by Peter Sís
Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt
Who Was First?: Discovering the Americas by Russell Freedman
Great Graphic Novels for Teens (top ten picks have an asterisk)
*The Arrival by Shaun Tan
*Laika by Nick Abadzis
The P.L.A.I.N. Janes by Cecil Castellucci, illustrated by Jim Rugg
Robot Dreams by Sara Varon
*The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain by Peter Sís
Yotsuba&! by Kiyohiko Azuma
Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers
The Periodic Table: Elements with Style! by Adrian Dingle, illustrated by Simon Basher