Today’s selection is a non-fiction book that splits between the present day and the Holocaust, between well-equipped spelunkers and three desperate Jewish families. What they share between them, across time and circumstance, is a secret cave in the Ukraine. Mindy from Propernoun takes us there in her gripping review of The Secret of Priest’s Grotto: A Holocaust Survival Story: The …
REVIEW: Dragon’s Keep by Janet Lee Carey
Many of us old timers in the blogging world remember when it was just Tasha Saecker and … well, it was just Tasha Saecker. Back in the early days of ’03, her Kids Lit blog was pretty much the only one of its kind. She’s said if she knew what crazy names we’d all be giving our online journals, she’d …
REVIEW: Mama’s Saris by Pooja Makhijani
Hey, wanna have a cuppa joe with Andrea and Mark over at Just One More Book? That’s what it feels like when you listen in on their podcasts; you can even make out the cappuccino maker sputtering in the background as they sit in their favorite cafe and gab about kids’ books. They both loved Mama’s Saris, about a young …
Introducing the Cybils widget
Isn’t this widget just lovely? It’s helping us highlight–and sell–the glorious children’s and young adult books nominated over the past seven weeks here at the 2007 Cybils. Refresh the page and see what happens. Ta-dah! A whole new book pops up. Within the next few days, we expect to have our widget loaded with every nominated book–however many that turns …
2007 Nominations are now closed
Many thanks to all who nominated. We hope you had fun picking your favorites. Now it’s our panelists’ turn. While we’re waiting for them to plow through the lists and make up their minds, we’ll still be busy here at Cybils. Starting Friday, the full lists of nominees will trickle in from our organizers, all nicely alphabetized. I’ll post them …
Telling Fibs to everyone
One of our esteemed Poetry judges, Gregory K. from GottaBook, is perhaps best known as the inventor of the Fib poem, based on the Fibonacci mathematical sequence of 1,1,2,3,5,8,13…(basically, you keeping taking the last two numbers and adding them together to get the next in the sequence). Fibs are the subject of a feature story at the Poetry Foundation, which …
Fids and Kamily
If you’re like me and the very mention of "The Wiggles" makes you twitch, you’ve no doubt already discovered Stefan Shephard’s blog for children’s music, Zooglobble. He’s a Cybils fan too and has sent some traffic our way. He knows a thing or two about awards. He (and some other kids music writers) just concluded Fids and Kamily, a list …
Hey, fence sitters, time to make up your minds!
Nominations close at midnight Chicago time on Wednesday, Nov. 21. I know some of you have been waiting until the 11th hour … well, that’s like any second now, okay? I won’t actually be up at midnight tomorrow, but I’ll delete any nominations that come in after deadline. I hate, hate, hate being a grouch, it really doesn’t suit my …
Snowflake auctions–tell us if you ended up bidding
Hey, who you calling a flake? For those who’ve been following the phenomenon of Robert’s Snow, the auction begins today. Jules and Eisha have the round-up of all the different artists who donated their talents to decorating a snowflake, with links to the bloggers who profiled them. There’s also a list on this blog (right column, scroll down a bit), …
More fame for the 7-Imp duo
In my other life, I’m the freelance editor for the Poetry Foundation’s children’s Web page. It’s my great pleasure to announce that two of Cybils’ organizers, Jules and Eisha, have an article suggesting which poems to sneak into your kid’s lunch box. Besides the usual holidays, you’ll find poems for losing a tooth, pop quizzes, fights with best friends … …