This book is all about solid researching techniques. Where did you start digging once you had the idea for the book? Or did plans for a series come partway through the research phase? Joan: The idea for this book first sprang out of the abundance of exciting and unbelievable true stories that we saw around us in the news and …
Interview with Elisha Cooper
What sparked the idea for the book? Do you have cats? About five years ago we got our daughters two kittens. A year later, one of the cats died. My daughters were devastated. I was too, of course, but having grown up on a farm with lots of animals, I think I was more familiar with life and death. That …
Interview with Caroline Arnold
Do you have plans to keep chickens after learning about their care along with Room 6? A number of years ago, before I moved to Los Angeles, I lived in the country with my family and we kept a flock of chickens. Watching the children in Room 6 care for their chickens reminded me of this experience. Now that I …
Interview with Julie Kim
What was the inspiration for Where’s Halmoni? My inspiration was mainly my children. I wanted to give them something that mirrored their experience of being part of two cultures, old and new, and both familiar and unfamiliar. In what ways does Where’s Halmoni reflect your own life? After I finished making this book, I realized that I had encapsulated my own experience of …
Interview with Stephanie Burgis
Dragons and chocolate seem like an odd combination. How did you come up with the idea? Dragons and chocolate are two of my very favorite things in the world, so I just loved the idea of mixing them together! And of course it gave me a fabulous excuse to make myself a rich, strong dark hot chocolate EVERY DAY for …
The 2017 Cybils Winners
There’s really not much to say, here at the announcement of the winners, except a HUGE Thank You (!) to all our volunteers: chairs, panelists, and judges. We could NOT have done it without you! Board Books Changing Faces: Meet Happy Bear by Nathan Thoms, illustrated by Carles Ballesteros Harry N Abrams Nominated by: Charlotte Learning about facial expressions and …
CYBILS Winners TOMORROW!
Now that the excitement from the ALA Youth Media Awards have died down (we really are living in a super-fast news cycle!) (who are we kidding: we’re still excited!) we want to remind you that we’ll have yet ANOTHER reason to be excited about children’s literature: At 9:30 a.m. PST we’ll announce this year’s CYBILS winners!! You’ll want to come …
2017 Cybils Reactions, Part 2
A few more reactions have come in over the weeks, and we’d like to highlight them. Yay for all the reactions! Picking up where we left of: Congrats to @GingerlyWrites #SueeAndTheShadow, which was just chosen as a 2017 @cybils finalist for “Elementary / Middle Grade Graphic Novels” https://t.co/bB8ceHZNGh — ABRAMS Kids (@abramskids) January 3, 2018 @cybils Belated huge thanks for …
2017 Finalist Reactions!
We love seeing them! Here’s what we found across social media over the past couple of days: Ahhhhhhhh The Dragon with a Chocolate Heart is a Cybils Finalist (in the Elementary/MG Speculative Fiction category: https://t.co/pUeBF9dRTb )!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am so, SO thrilled and over-the-moon about this!!! @KidsBloomsbury @bloomsburykids https://t.co/erjE1QctrC — Stephanie Burgis 🐲 …
2017 Cybils Finalists
2017 was a difficult year, all around. Participation was down (we had to put Audiobooks on hiatus!), several judges and category chairs had personal or family crises, and we had issues with getting access to all the books. It wasn’t easy for the Cybils this year. However, we rallied — we had 1426 books nominated across all the categories — we …