It never fails to amaze me how every year brings such a wild and wonderful assortment of middle grade speculative fiction books! Along with spells and space rockets, this is the category for books with talking animals, time-travel, ghosts, and paranormal abilities, and all the other books that might not have obvious magic on every page, and which are set here on Earth, but which push past the boundaries of daily life into what is almost certainly impossible, or at least hasn’t happened in real life yet (though it might happen next year…).
The two main criteria of the Cybils are excellent writing and kid appeal, and these come first and foremost when we assemble our shortlist. These books will be ones whose creativity, world building, and characters fly off the rapidly turning pages and into our hearts and minds.