Our purpose is two-fold:
- Reward the children’s and young adult authors (and illustrators, let’s not forget them) whose books combine the highest literary merit and “kid appeal.” What’s that mean? If some la-di-dah awards can be compared to brussel sprouts, and other, more populist ones to gummy bears, we’re thinking more like organic chicken nuggets. We’re yummy and nutritious.
- Foster a sense of community among bloggers who write about children’s and YA literature, highlight our best reviewers (and shamelessly promote their blogs) and provide a forum for the similarly obsessed.
We wouldn’t be a real awards if we didn’t have a whole bunch of complicated rules in tortured lawyerese. So maybe we’re not a real awards, because there aren’t any lawyers and only two rules:
- You (and you can be anybody, even you) may nominate any book published in the contest year in English;
- Only one book per category. We have ways of checking this, so play nice. Nominations open Oct. 1 and close Oct. 15.
After that, here’s what happens:
- We place all the authors names into a hat and pass our magic wand over it. After the rabbit pops out, we eat him and announce the winner, whom we have selected at random;
- Not really! Just testing you. We have panelists in each category who eat the rabbit. No, er, they read the books. They have until January 1 for that, which we hope and pray will be enough time. On Jan. 1 we’ll post the finalists;
- From Jan. 1 to mid-February, a second group of judges will read all the finalists and pick the winners, which we’ll announce on Valentine’s Day.
See? Easy. And no actual rabbits will be harmed in the process.
To contact us:
cybils09 (at) gmail (dot) com
If you don’t get a prompt reply (during the off-season we generally don’t check our inbox as often), contact Anne Levy at anne (at) bookbuds (dot) net.