I was going through my feed reader the other day, and I noticed a press release from the American Bookseller’s Association announcing their new Revisit & Rediscover initiative, highlighting older (called backlist in the industry) titles. They describe it as this:
Each quarter, the Kids’ Indie Next List will highlight three backlist titles each, plus bookseller blurbs, for picture book, middle grade, and young adult readers.
The first list will be out in December, on the Winter Kids’ Indie Next List. The titles they picked are:
Ages 4–8:
- Bark, George, by Jules Feiffer
- A Story for Bear, by Dennis Haseley and Jim LaMarche
- The Other Side, by Jacqueline Woodson, illustrated by E.B. Lewis
Ages 9–12:
- London Eye Mystery, by Siobhan Dowd
- Ida B, by Katherine Hannigan
- The Secret of Platform 13, by Eva Ibbotson
Teen:
- A Northern Light, by Jennifer Donnelly
- My Most Excellent Year, by Steve Kluger
- The Wee Free Men, by Terry Pratchett
And the first thing I noticed was that The London Eye Mystery won the Cybils the first year I was on the Middle Grade Fiction Panel. So cool! It’s a title I’d almost forgotten about, and I was just a little proud that a Cybils winner made the list.
Then I got to thinking: most of these books were nominated for the Cybils, and although they didn’t pick any other of our winners or finalists, the Cybils lists are an excellent resource to find amazing backlist books. If you get a chance, go peruse our 2006, 2007, and 2008 finalists, just to remind yourself of the great books that were considered good enough to be chosen as finalists.