Back in January, we asked for feedback on the nominating process, and you answered. Big time. And we heard you. We also promised you’d be invited to our post mortem, the term editors use for dissecting their publication after it hits the stands. Or, in this case, the tubes. What went right? What needs tweaking? What needs an extreme makeover? …
Telling the Story in History: An Interview with Russell Freedman
Russell Freedman received the first ever Cybils Award in nonfiction for Freedom Walkers (Holiday House), an account of the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott of 1955. What impressed the judges was the way Freedman told the story through the lives of the ordinary men and women, teens and adults who participated. Even the icons of the Civil Rights Movement are portrayed …
Q&A with Laura Amy Schlitz
The Middle Grade Fiction category of the Cybils Award didn’t exactly lack for nominations. So how do you go about selecting the best of the best? Well sometimes a book rises above and beyond the literary pack. In A Drowned Maiden’s Hair, author Laura Amy Schlitz manages to combine great writing and an atmospheric text with situations and characters that …
An Interview with Mélanie Watt
Out of over 100 nominated picture book titles, Scaredy Squirrel rose to the top to collect the Cybils Award. The book stars a squirrel who’s afraid of everything and won’t leave his comfort zone, until one day…well, you should really read the book. What sets this book apart from the pack is its kid appeal. Kids of all ages–including grown-up …
Hooray for Chris!
Please everyone go congratulate one of our organizers, Chris at Bartography, for selling his second book to Little, Brown. For now, he’s cryptically calling it S.V.T. We wish him the best and look forward to its publication (and learning its real title!). Here’s the link again.
Working in tandem
We had a nice surprise from the folks at Tandem Library Books the other day. I first noticed our hits going through the roof–more than 500 by midday, a number that nearly rivaled our big announcement. What’s up with that, I wondered. But there wasn’t any link in the referrers; everyone was coming from emails and then remaining to browse …
An Amaz-ing discovery
On the day we announced the Cybils finalists, Jen Robinson called on everyone to buy copies of the winners from Amazon, while Sheila Ruth charted whether the books rose in popularity. Did we make a difference? Can we add "marketplace clout" to our list of accomplishments? The answer is a qualified yes. We affected the sales rankings, sometimes dramatically, for …
An interview with Joyce Sidman
The first-ever winner of a Cybil for Poetry is Butterfly Eyes and Other Secrets of the Meadow: Poems by Joyce Sidman, illustrated by Beth Krommes. It was selected by the committee based in part on its wonderfully rich language and imagery. The book, a series of riddle poems in pairs, incorporates a variety of poetic forms, ranging from free verse …
Buzz
The net is buzzing with news of The Cybils. Here’s what the internet has to say: Susan at Northern Suburban Library Systems immediately makes the blogging connection, writing “Congratulations to the group of bloggers who have diligently read and voted on the 2006 best children’s books. They just announced (on a blog, of course) their top choices in nine categories.” …
Welcome to the Cybils
Results are now in for the first-ever Cybils, which recognizes childrens’ and YA books with a mix of literary quality and kid appeal. Click here for the list of winners, or download a printer-friendly version of the entire short list to take with you to the library or bookstore.