Librarian Mom: The Cybils are coming! The Cybils are coming!

The Cybils are coming! The Cybils are coming!

Yes, it’s time for the Third Annual Children’s and Young Adult Bloggers’ Literary Awards—the only blogger-run book award in the world, as far as we can tell. This year, I finally got up the courage to volunteer, and now, along with some other splendiferous folks, I get to be one of the judges for the brand-new Easy Reader category! I am pretty excited and am looking forward to the discussions and debates that will ensue in January.

Nominations for all categories open on October 1^st (that’s TOMORROW) and close on October 15^th. It’s easy to nominate a book: just go to the nomination post for that category on the Cybils website and post a comment with the title and author of the title you want to nominate. Panelists will read and consider all the nominees, and choose five to seven finalists in each category. Then the judges (like me!) will confer and debate and choose the winner for each category from among the finalists. Finalists will be announced January 1, and winners announced February 14.

Here are a few tips if you want to nominate a title:

All titles must be published in 2008. So your childhood favorites, alas, are not eligible (unless you are a child right now).
Each person is only allowed to nominate one title in each genre. So if there are, say, three picture books published in 2008 that you absolutely love, you may want to be strategic and wait a few days to see if someone else nominates one or two of your favorites; then you can nominate the title that no one else has chosen, to make sure it gets some attention.
Multiple nominations don’t increase a book’s chances of winning; all nominees are considered equally. If someone else has already nominated one of your favorite books, don’t waste your vote: nominate a different title for that category if there’s another one you like enough.
Pay attention to the category in which you’re nominating a book. There are nine categories: Easy Readers, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Fiction Picture Books, Graphic Novels, Middle Grade Novels, Non-Fiction Middle Grade/Young Adult Books, Non-Fiction Picture Books, Poetry, Young Adult Novels. It can get tricky, but basically genre trumps age level: if you want to nominate a graphic novel or fantasy novel that’s aimed at a teen audience, nominate it under Graphic Novels, or Fantasy/Science Fiction, not Young Adult.
Most importantly: Anyone can nominate! No special qualifications, degrees, or permissions are necessary.

Here’s the link to the website again, just to make it easier still ;-) And here’s the FAQ page, in case you have more questions—it’s from last year, but if you mentally substitute “2008” wherever it says “2007” everything will make perfect sense.

Now, go thou and nominate!

September 30, 2008