[Edited] My Cybils Reading List, Part 1: Easy Readers, Picture Books, and Poetry

Finalists for the 2008 Cybils (Children's and Young Adult Bloggers' Literary Awards) were posted on January 1; thank you to the panelists who read and reviewed the nominated books in each of eight categories. Last year I planned to read and review at least one new (to me) book from each category before the winners were announced on February 14; you can see how well I did here. This year I'm planning to do even better. Would you like to join me? Here's Part 1 of my 2008 Cybils Reading List:

Easy readers. This is a new category for the Cybils this year. Of the five finalists, I've read one: Houndsley and Catina and the Quiet Time by James Howe; illustrated by Marie-Louise Gay (Candlewick). I liked it; true to its title, it's a quiet book, beautifully illustrated in watercolors. I was surprised to see that two of Mo Willems's Elephant and Piggie books made it to the shortlist (I Love My New Toy! and I Will Surprise My Friend! ). I like Mo Willems as much as the next person (which is to say a lot), but I prefer his picture books to this series. And I'm not Mercy Watson's biggest fan, either. That leaves Maybelle Goes to Tea by Katie Speck; illustrated by Paul Ratz de Tagyos (Henry Holt).

Can you tell I'm still bitter that Dick King-Smith's The Twin Giants, illustrated by Mini Grey (Candlewick) wasn't eligible this year? Moving on.

Fiction Picture Books. There are eight finalists in this category, of which I've read four. I should probably write a separate post about all of them once I've read the rest. First up is Abe Lincoln Crosses a Creek: A Tall Thin Tale (Introducing His Forgotten Frontier Friend) by Deborah Hopkinson; illustrated by John Hendrix (Schwartz and Wade). Hopkinson's Apples to Oregon (it has an even longer subtitle) is a recent read-aloud at our house; I have high hopes for Abe.

Nonfiction Picture Books. I've only read one of the seven finalists in this category; that was Wanda Gag: The Girl Who Lived to Draw by Deborah Kogan Ray (Viking). I don't have strong feelings about any of the other finalists, although they all look interesting. Any suggestions?

Poetry. I abandoned one of the five poetry finalists (Naomi Shihab Nye's Honeybee) last year; fortunately I read another (David Elliot's On the Farm; illustrated by Holly Meade) with Milly just this morning and loved it. I'm also planning to read Imaginary Menagerie: A Book of Curious Creatures by Julie Larios, illustrated by Julie Paschkis (Harcourt); it looks gorgeous, like a modern bestiary.

I'll be back on Friday with the rest of my Cybils reading list, including Fantasy and Science Fiction, Graphic Novels, Middle Grade and Young Adult books. I'd love some recommendations, too. Thanks!

Aesop Awards: The Press Release

[In case you don't want to read the whole press release, the winner is Ain't Nothing But a Man: My Quest to Find the Real John Henry by Scott Reynolds Nelson, with Marc Aronson (National Geographic, 2008).  I'm intrigued by the book's subtitle; you can also read more about how Nelson and Aronson approach the topic of historical research for kids below.]

I recently requested a press release about the 2008 Aesop Awards from the folks at the American Folklore Society. Tim Lloyd, the executive director of AFS, responded with one; thank you. I'm reproducing it in full because I think it does a good job of explaining both the criteria for the award and how this year's award-winning choices meet or exceed those criteria. I'm also hoping to track down a copy of Anne Shelby's Adventures of Molly Whuppie (UNC Press, 2007), about which I had previously heard nothing.  I think I would love it!

Finalists for the 2008 National Book Award

The finalists for the 2008 National Book Award in Young People's Literature were announced today:

Laurie Halse Anderson, Chains (Simon & Schuster)
Kathi Appelt, The Underneath (Atheneum)
Judy Blundell, What I Saw and How I Lied (Scholastic)
E. Lockhart, The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks (Hyperion)
Tim Tharp, The Spectacular Now (Alfred A. Knopf)

I can't wait to read Chains, which is set in Revolutionary New York.  The powerful cover art is by Christopher Silas Neal.

Coincidentally, I just finished M.T. Anderson's The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. I: The Pox Party (Candlewick), set in Revolutionary Boston, which won this award in 2006.  It is itself an astonishing book.  Volume II:  The Kingdom on the Waves was released yesterday.  What to read first?

Cybils 2008: Nominations Now Open

Nominations for the third annual Children's and Young Adult Bloggers' Literary Awards (the Cybils) are open from now til October 15th.  The Cybils recognize children's books that combine literary quality and kid appeal.  Anyone (that means you) can nominate a book in any or all of the following nine categories:

Easy Readers
Fantasy & Science Fiction
Fiction Picture Books
Graphic Novels
Middle Grade Novels
Nonfiction Middle Grade/Young Adult Books
Nonfiction Picture Books
Poetry
Young Adult Novels

To nominate a book, visit the Cybils blog and leave a comment (title and author will do) on the appropriate post.  Clicking on the category links above will take you right there.

Remember:

• Nominated books must have been published in 2008
• One nomination per person, per category
• Multiple nominations will not help a book's chances.  Pick another book!

I'll be offering my short lists (um, for your consideration) over the next week or so.  What are you nominating?

2008 BGHB Awards: The Arrival (and Grandfather's Journey)

The winners of the 2008 Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards were announced today (see the list of past winners and honor books here).  The judges awarded a special citation, only the fifth in the BGHB's 40-year history, to The Arrival by Shaun Tan (Arthur A. Levine, 2007).  On his website, Tan describes the book as "a migrant story told as a series of wordless images that might seem to come from a forgotten time."  The more I read about the ideas behind the book and the process of creating it (also on Tan's website), the more interested I am in reading it and the rest of Tan's work, none of which is available at my library.  I hope that will change now.

Another book about the immigrant experience won the BGHB Award for a Picture Book in 1994.  Grandfather's Journey by Allen Say (Houghton Mifflin, 1993) is a beautiful book, quiet and powerful; one of my favorites.  It won the Caldecott earlier that year, too.  Highly recommended.

Children's Choice Book Awards

Children's Book Week is May 12-18.  This year, kids can vote online for the first annual Children's Choice Book Awards.  The nominees (5 in each category: books published in 2007 for grades K-2, 3-4, and 5-6; plus favorite author and illustrator) were selected by kids across the country.  I was a little disconcerted when I saw the nominees for favorite books, none of which I've read.  Am I completely out of touch with children's choices?  I hope not!

[Children's Book Week Official Poster by Mary GrandPre.  I love GrandPre's work: she illustrated the lovely Lucia and the Light (reviewed here) and some books about a wizard you may have heard of.  Posters are available from the CBC; see here for how to get one.]

2007 Golden Kite Awards

The Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) announced the winners and honorees of the 2007 Golden Kite Awards last week (I heard the news via cynsations).  The Golden Kite Awards are the only children's literary awards that are essentially peer-reviewed: the winner of the Fiction award is chosen by a panel of fiction writers, etc. (kind of like the SAG Awards for children's books).  Another interesting thing about the Golden Kites is that, for the purposes of the awards, they separate Picture Book Text from Picture Book Illustration.  How do they do that?

Some of my favorite books of 2007 were runners-up for a Golden Kite this year.  I loved Lauren Tarshis's portrayal of average girl Colleen Pomerantz (if Colleen had a superpower, she would want it to be Not Caring) in the middle-grade novel Emma-Jean Lazarus Fell Out of a Tree (Penguin, 2007).  And I wrote a review of The End by David LaRochelle, who was a runner-up for Picture Book Text.

Oh, and the winners look good, too!  You can see them all here.

2007 Cybils

Congratulations to the 2007 Cybils winners (announced 2/14/07).  And thank you to everyone who worked so hard (and read so many books) for coming up with a list that has something for everyone, kids and their grownups alike, to love.  I read a lot of good books I might not otherwise have heard of thanks to the Cybils (see my final Cybils reading list here), but I was particularly happy to see The Chicken-Chasing Queen of Lamar County by Janice N. Harrington (terrific paintings and mixed-media pictures by Shelley Jackson; Farrar, Strauss and Giroux) and This is Just to Say: Poems of Apology and Forgiveness by Joyce Sidman (Houghton Mifflin) win in the Fiction Picture Book and Poetry categories, respectively--they were my favorites.  Now for 2008!

My Final Cybils Reading List

When the finalists for the Cybils awards were announced in January, I came up with a plan to read at least one finalist from each category before the winners were announced on Valentine's Day.  That's tomorrow!  So how did I do?

I commented on several of the Fiction Picture Book finalists in this post.  Since then, Milly and I have discovered The Chicken-Chasing Queen of Lamar County.  Pruck!  We love it.

In Poetry, I read Good Masters! Sweet Ladies: Voices from a Medieval Village by Laura Amy Schlitz.  I loved it and made a prediction about it here.  Since then, I've also read Joyce Sidman's wonderful This is Just to Say: Poems of Apology and Forgiveness.  It's my pick for the Cybil.

I read two finalists in Middle Grade Fiction (one of my favorite genres of children's literature):  Miss Spitfire by Sarah Miller and Emma-Jean Lazarus Fell Out of a Tree by Lauren Tarshis.  And I'm so glad I did.

I also read two finalists in Young Adult Fiction:  The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie and The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt.

And two in Middle Grade/Young Adult Nonfiction:  Who Was First? Discovering the Americas by Russell Freedman and The Wall by Peter Sis.

I didn't read anything from the three remaining categories, though.  In my defense, I couldn't find the Nonfiction Picture Book  and Graphic Novel  I wanted to read at the library.  I'm guilty as charged for Science Fiction and Fantasy, though.  At least I know what I'm reading next!

Picture book finalists (Cybils)

I've read three of the seven Fiction Picture Book finalists for the Cybils.  All three of them are wonderful books (of course), but reading them together, I was struck by how different from one another they are, and how difficult the job of choosing one winner would be.

Leaves by David Ezra Stein (Putnam's, 2007)

For the littlest picture book readers (and listeners) on up; about the seasons of a bear's first year.  Spare text and expressive art, created with bamboo pen and a warm palette of watercolors.  This one feels timeless.

The Incredible Book-Eating Boy by Oliver Jeffers (Philomel, 2007)

Eating was a common medieval metaphor for reading.  This boy, however, literally consumes his books.  He could be forgiven for taking a bite of this one's creamy, krafty matte pages.  I love the art, which was created with paint, pencil and Letraset "on pages from old books that libraries were getting rid of, the artist found, or people were throwing out."

Four Feet, Two Sandals by Karen Lynn Williams and Khadra Mohammed, illustrated by Doug Chayka (Eerdmans, 2007)

This book is dedicated to Zanib, a refugee girl who asked for a book about children like her (read more about how it came to be written at the author's website).  The girls who share the sandals in this story are living in a refugee camp outside of Peshawar, but the themes of friendship and separation are universal.

[Okay, I also read Knuffle Bunny Too: A Case of Mistaken Identity by Mo Willems (Hyperion, 2007).  You probably have (too).  And did you hear it won a Caldecott Honor?  Of course you did.  So you don't need me to tell you how good it is, although I will if you want.]

How does one choose a winner from among these books?  Hmm, maybe I need to take a closer look at the judging criteria for the Cybils.

My Newbery Pick [updated to add: It won!]

Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!  Voices from a Medieval Village by Laura Amy Schlitz, illustrated by Robert Byrd (Candlewick, 2007).

2007 Cybils: Finalists II and another reading list

More Cybils!  Finalists in the remaining four categories were posted on the Cybils blog this morning.  My plan is to read and review at least one new (to me) book from each category before the winners are announced on February 14.  Unfortunately, some of the books I picked last week aren't available at the public library yet (I know! I've placed a purchase suggestion), so I may have to make some last-minute substitutions.

Here's the rest of my Cybils reading list:

Young Adult Fiction.  I just finished The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie (Little, Brown; 2007).  I'm making it count, even if I have to read it again.  It's that good.

Nonfiction Picture Books.  We read all the egg books.  Last year's winner in this category, An Egg is Quiet by Dianna Aston, illustrated by Sylvia Long (Chronicle, 2006) is a family favorite.  This year I'm going with Guess What Is Growing Inside This Egg by Mia Posada (Millbrook, 2007).

Graphic Novels.  I'm new to graphic novels, so I'll start with a finalist in the elementary and middle grade group:  The Courageous Princess (I'm so predictable) by Rod Espinosa (Dark Horse, 2007).

Middle Grade/Young Adult Nonfiction.  I love this category of book and am already familiar with a few of the short-listed titles.  I really want to see Smart-opedia by Eve Drobot (Maple Tree, 2007); I think Leo's going to like that one, too.

Now, if only the library held any of these (they do have Part-Time Indian), I would be all set!  Thanks again to the panelists who had the enviable job of reading all of the nominated titles, and the difficult one of narrowing them down to these short lists.  I'm looking forward to reading my way through them.

2007 Cybils: Finalists I

I love children's-book-award season.  This is the second year for the Cybils (Children's and Young Adult Bloggers' Literary Awards); finalists in four categories were posted on the Cybils blog this morning.  Many thanks to the panelists who read and reviewed all of the nominated books and came up with such interesting lists.  I was pleasantly surprised by how many of the finalists I had never even heard of (I confess; and I read a lot) and wanted to rectify that right away.

I'd like to read and review at least one new (to me) book from each category before the winners are announced on Valentine's Day.  Who knows?  Maybe I'll even pick the winners!  Anyway, here are the books I've chosen to read from among the first group of finalists:

Science Fiction and Fantasy.  There are so many appealing books in this category.  I'm starting with Into the Wild by Sarah Beth Durst (Razorbill, 2007), because of the fairy tales.  Then Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale (Bloomsbury, 2007).  The finalists in the SFF category were split into middle-grade and YA this year, which makes sense to me.

Fiction Picture Books.  I think I can manage at least two (very different) picture books:  Leaves by David Ezra Stein (Putnam, 2007), and The Incredible Book-Eating Boy by Oliver Jeffers (Philomel, 2007).

Poetry.  I want to read everything Laura Amy Schlitz has ever written (including last year's Cybil award-winning middle grade novel, A Drowned Maiden's Hair).  Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! : Voices from a Medieval Village (Candlewick, 2007) was already on my list; I was so pleased to see it on this one, too.

Middle Grade.  The story of Helen Keller's teacher, Annie Sullivan:  Miss Spitfire by Sarah Miller (Atheneum, 2007).  I like books that tell the other side of a familiar (and in this case, true) story.

Finalists in the remaining categories (nonfiction picture books, graphic novels, young adult novels, and middle grade/young adult nonfiction) will be posted next week.  I'll be waiting!

Mary and the Mouse, MouseMouse and Maria?

Amazon.com's list of the Best Books of 2007 appeared in my Inbox last night. I was pleased to see that Mary and the Mouse, the Mouse and Mary by Beverly Donofrio, illustrated by Barbara McClintock (Schwartz and Wade, 2007) was one of their editor's top ten picture books of the year. We don't own it (yet), which makes it difficult to write about, but I love Barbara McClintock's work. When I saw Mary on display at Aladdin's Lamp a few days ago, I took a quick peek and was instantly charmed. I particularly liked the double-page spreads of the two houses, red brick Colonial and contemporary ranch, that the two generations of girls and mice live in.

Milly got two McClintock books for Christmas last year (Cinderella, which has become our favorite edition of that fairy tale, and Adele and Simon).  I think she may find another one under the tree this year.