The middle grade/young adult nonfiction committee has selected, from the 45 nominated books, a collection of seven high-quality, kid-friendly titles. Looking to read more nonfiction in 2008? Any or all of these titles will get you off to an excellent start. Of course, there are other wonderful titles on the nominations list, too, but the committee felt that these seven …
Trivia contest
So far, there’s only one entrant to a Cybils trivia contest going on over at Book Buds, your humble editor’s alter-blog. Here’s the deal: You answer three questions via email, and you get a chance to win a pop-up version of The Chronicles of Narnia. Okay, so C.S. Lewis isn’t one of our finalists this year, but it’s a very …
Buy our bling!
Yes, we’re shamelessly promoting our "brand" here. Now you too can own stuff with our fabulous logo emblazoned on it, thanks to the wonders of CafePress. Click on the ad below for the full line of Cybils stuff. We only have a handful of items. We’ll do t-shirts as soon as we think up a slogan. Got any ideas? Leave …
Wedding bells for a Cybils judge
We here at the Cybils extend a big, cheerful Mazel Tov to Stacey Shubitz of Two Writing Teachers. Stacey is one of this year’s judges for the Fiction Picture Books category. On December 23, 2007, despite lots of rain she had a beautiful wedding ceremony, marrying Marc at the The Grand Summit Hotel in Summit, New Jersey. She celebrated with …
We have a winner: it’s us!
What’s it like waking up and discovering you’re a Cybils finalist? Sarah Beth Durst had trouble waiting until 6 a.m. yesterday, when the lists began posting: My husband admitted later that he’d actually woken up earlier and had been lying in bed thinking, "I want to check. I don’t want to check. I want to check. I don’t want to …
2007 Science Fiction & Fantasy Finalists
It was difficult to choose only ten books out of the 94 outstanding nominations we received in fantasy and science fiction, but the panelists worked hard and passionately to choose the best of the best. We selected five finalists for the teen/young adult age level and five for the elementary & middle grade level. We hope you enjoy these books …
2007 Fiction Picture Books Finalists
Pssst!by Adam RexHarcourt Children’s BooksBuy From Amazon | Buy from BookSense Pssst! is a funny, light-hearted fantasy that uses snappy text and surreal post-modern oil-and-acrylic illustrations to tell the tale of a girl who visits a zoo with crafty animals who all want something from her. This results in a surprise ending and one of the year’s most unforgettable illustrated …
2007 Poetry Finalists
Animal Poemswritten by Valerie Worth, illustrated by Steve JenkinsFarrar, Strauss & Giroux The poems about twenty-three different animals (some common and some very unusual) are told using free verse–not a typical choice in collections for children these days (at least not when it’s the sole type of verse). And these poems are spectacular in their use of imagery and metaphor. …
2007 Middle Grade Finalists
A Crooked Kind of Perfectby Linda UrbanHarcourtBuy from Amazon | Buy from BookSense "I teach middle school, and sometimes I find that I have more choices for my readers who like edgy YA stories than I do for those kids who read well but aren’t quite ready for teenager issues. A Crooked Kind of Perfect is a perfect kind of …
Short lists: the long and short of it
Tomorrow is the first of our finalist announcements. I think I’ll torture you a little. Some trivia about the lists, but no hints: Two of them have grown to eight seven, and another to seven, eight, instead of last year’s five;* The Fantasy/Science Fiction list has split in two by age group, with five in each; There are a goodly …