Let The fun Begin

So most of you are probably not following my other blog The Children's Literature Book Club, but I'm starting a Utah chapter of the book club, and now that I've made that decision, I'm back to posting on the book club blog.

To make good news even better, I recently found out that I'm a judge for the fictional picture book committee for the Cybils awards! I'm so excited. I served on the middle grade fiction panel two years ago and can't wait to be a judge again.

What are the Cybils some of you may wonder (but I hope many of you already know)? It's the award that was started three years ago when many children's and YA lit bloggers questioned the award winners: many of the ALA (Newbery, Caldecott, etc.) didn't really seem like books kids would enjoy and the Quill winners were sort of a joke, just whatever the publisher sold the most of whether it showed literary value or not. It seemed like there should be an award out there that took the middle ground for literary books that kids would love. Thus, Kelly Herold and Anne Boles Levy gathered the kidlitosphere and started their own awards, The Cybils.

Starting today, anyone can nominate one book for each of the Cybils categories. Then once the nominations have closed, I'll be on the committee narrowing down all the fictional picture books to five finalists. We'll pass the finalists onto another judging panel to decide the winner.

Head on over and start nominating or check out the nomination lists for some great recommendations!