The Gift of Giving

We are constantly amazed at our Cybils judges. They spend personal time reading books and thinking and discussing about them, and championing kids books all over the internet. But, sometimes, they do things that go above and beyond, and we sit back in amazement and feel a need to share.

Our Fiction Picture Book/Board Book Chair, Deb Nance, sent us an email with this:

“Early in the Cybils process, Ami Jones let me know that she would be having surgery on December 19, and so would be offline for a few days in December.

I did not realize that the reason she would be offline is that she is donating a kidney.

Yes, donating a kidney. “

It turns out that Ami has blogged about the experience at her blog, A Mom’s Spare Time. Go read it. We especially like her theme of helping others — anyone can do what she did! — in anyway they can. As Ami wrote:

A few people have asked “What caused you to make this decision right now?” The thing is, I would have signed up ages ago if I had known about it. I just didn’t know about it. So if I blog about it and talk about it, maybe there will be someone else who finds out – “Wait, I can save someone’s life now, not after I’m gone?” Or someone who thought about it will see the process isn’t that scary, and decide to go ahead with it.

Go read her post, and then, for us, go find a way to help. It’ll make the world a better place, and we all want that.

(P.S. The surgery went well, and Ami’s recovering nicely. We thought you’d like to know.)