Sigh. It's that time of year again, when I remind you of our fabulous Amazon Affiliate thingee and plead with you to do your holiday shopping by clicking on our site first. It's gotten a little dire around here. We (okay, I) haven't ordered the 2010 awards yet because we haven't had the money. I do have the money now, …
Completely unrelated to book blogging
A childhood friend of mine has just been diagnosed for the FIFTH time with cancer, and she's taken my advice and begun a blog. She's called it You're Crying on My Cashmere, which pretty much sums her up. She's one of the co-founders of the Young Survival Coalition and if she says she's going to "kick cancer's a–," well, she …
Review
“Invisible Inkling” by Emily Jenkins
The rules about who can or can't judge for Cybils are designed to be flexible. Some people can maintain their blogging schedule the way marathon runners keep to a tight workout routine. We love those people, but we're not all marathoners. So Cybils isn't fussy about when you started your site. We're happy to make space for a blogger like …
Review
“Press Here” by Herve Tullet
We've been accused of having too many librarians here at Cybils. Is that actually possible? If we lost our librarians, we'd be missing out on people like Travis Jonkers, who brings a breezy, personable writing style to his book reviews. Travis blogs at 100 Scope Notes and also reviews for School Library Journal. Picture books are his specialty and he's …
Review
“Daughter of Smoke and Bone” by Laini Taylor
Who better to highlight today for Fantasy & Science Fiction than our own illustrious Sheila Ruth? If you're a fan of the genre, you've probably already bookmarked her blog, Wands and Worlds. Sheila's one of Cybils' founders, signing up right after the idea was born. She's done a ton of stuff behind the scenes, but that would require several more …
Review
“The Big Crunch” by Pete Hautman
Leila Roy has the most awesome name for a book blog ever, Bookshelves of Doom. But her reviews are the opposite of scary. She describes them as a personal response to what she reads, noting "highbrow intellectual critiques do not live here." Instead, she's turned her long-running blog into a forum for the young adult books she adores, and her …
Capsule Reviews for Fiction Picture Books
Like many children's book bloggers, Dawn Mooney is a mom and her favorite test audience is made up of her three kids. When she writes for the group blog 5 Minutes for Books, you can bet the selected stories have gotten a thumb's up from some very discerning critics. Dawn's also a former preschool teacher, a perspective that we're sure …
Review
“Bootleg: Murder, Moonshine and the Lawless Years of Prohibition” by Karen Blumenthal
I get to feature a fellow Arizonan today. Roberta Gibson's a scientist when she's not book blogging over at Wrapped in Foil. She's judging for us in nonfiction for tweens and teens this year, and she's provided a handy-dandy directory of all her reviews in this genre so far. Bootleg: Murder, Moonshine, and the Lawless Years of Prohibition by Karen …
Capsule reviews for Middle Grade Fiction
Today's featured blog gives us a bunch of bonbons — short and sweet — and all Middle Grade Fiction. Karen Yingling organizes her blog, Ms. Yingling Reads, into handy categories such as adventure, history, fantasy or humor. I first heard of her a couple years ago when she emailed my husband at his blog to ask if he could recommend …
Review
“The Inquisitor’s Apprentice” by Chris Moriarty
Any day now, I shall stop whining about the lack of non-Holocaust kids' books with Jewish characters. Fortunately, I have Charlotte Taylor of Charlotte's Library to point me in the right direction. Charlotte's one of the most prolific and experienced review bloggers in the kidlitosphere, and that's no exaggeration. Her reviews nearly always show the depth and breadth of her …