More Cybils Fanfare

The Cybils team has, of course, been thrilled at the Cybils-themed graphics that we received from Mo Willems and from the Rapunzel's Revenge team of Shannon and Dean Hale and Nathan Hale (see the images in the posts below). But we are equally thrilled by these other author and media responses to the Cybils:

The Cybils award was mentioned in a positive light in this School Library Journal article by Debra Lau Whelan about self-censorship (in the context of awards received by last year's YA winner, Boy Toy). Thanks to Gail Gauthier for the link.

Shortly before the winners were announced, I had a lovely email from Helen Frost, author of middle grade fiction shortlist title Diamond Willow. Helen said: "I am amazed and delighted that Diamond Willow is a Cybils finalist, and so impressed with the quality and depth of the conversation about my book and others. Thank you so much for honoring our books in this way."

As soon as the winners were announced, School Library Journal reported on the winners in an article by Rocco Staino. He said: "Nothing warms a librarian’s heart more than another book award list, and on Valentine’s Day kid lit bloggers announced the winners of the Cybils".

Middle Grade Fantasy winner Neil Gaiman wrote on his blog: "The Graveyard Book won a Cybil Award — which is the children's book award from the blogging community. I was thrilled. All of the Cybil nominees and winners looked good this year, and I'm proud to be among them, and congratulations to everyone involved."

Cylin Busby, co-author with her father John Busby of The Year We Disappeared, wrote about winning the Cybils award for middle grade/YA nonfiction, saying: "Went to the "Kids Heart Authors" event at our local indie this morning (Skylight Books in Los Feliz). And when we got home, there were tons of emails in my inbox saying "Congrats!" and whatnot. So I thought, "wow, folks are getting pretty excited about this CBS show tonight, but it's not like we won an award or something…." oops. We DID win an award. A Cybils Award!"

E. Lockhart wrote: "I am so so pleased that The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks won a Cybils Award for best young adult novel!"

And we had lovely mentions from Paul at Omnivoracious ("These blogger literary awards definitely succeed in identifying the organic chicken nuggets of the kid-lit world"), sassmonkey from BlogHer "The Cybils are one of the most fun book awards out there … It's a grassroots as an award can be and it's utterly fantastic.", and Carol Rasco's RIF blog ("Check out this year’s winners as well as the process for Cybils and be prepared to nominate your favorites in October 2009!").

The Cybils winners were also covered by too many children's and young adult book blogs to mention. Thank you all for helping to spread and share our joy in this year's winners! — Jen Robinson, Literacy Evangelist