Cybils Finalists!
It's here! It's here! Oh Frabjuous day! Calloo, Callay! I chortle in my joy.
No, I have not just slain the Jabberwock, nor has my beamish girl (who is not very beamish right now—she's flomped across the couch, whining that she is TOO TIRED to clean the fish tank, or even to finish her pizza. She had a sleepover last night). Rather, it is Cybils Finalist Time!
Yes, the 2008 Children's and Young Adult Bloggers' Literary Awards have announced their finalists in nine different genres (eleven, really, since graphic novels and fantasy/science fiction are each split into younger kid/older kid sub-categories). And a fine bunch they are, too.
I'm in awe of the panelists, who had to track down and read a truly astounding number of nominees (over 100, for some categories) to winnow them down to these short lists of five to seven titles for each category. And I'm excited about the featured titles. There are some that I've read and have loved, like, Ten Cents a Dance, a knockout historical novel that's a finalist in the Young Adult Fiction category, and Chester's Back, a Fiction Picture Book finalist that continues the adventures of Chester, a charmingly insousciant and independent cat who just won't listen to his author and tries to take over the book.
And there are some that I haven't read and now want even more to get my hands on: like We Are the Ship: The Story of the Negro League Baseball, a middle-grade nonfiction title that sounds so good it might make me overcome my antipathy to reading about sports. Then there's The Graveyard Book, which is also in a genre I don't usually go near—horror, in this case—but its description in the fantasy/science fiction finalist list is so intriguing—who would expect the story of a boy being raised by ghosts to be "full of humor [and] loveable characters"?—that I'm going to have to give it a try.
But the list I've been studying most carefully is the Easy Reader Finalists. This year, I'm a judge in this category, and since I'll be on vacation from work next week I'm looking forward to having lots of time to read the finalists, and to test-drive them on various young readers. Will I get quiet time, like Houndsley and Catina? Go to tea, like Maybelle? Think like a pig, like Mercy? Or will I love my new toy and surprise my friend? Stay tuned!
