Jone is a regular contributor in the Poetry Friday community. Her blog Check It Out features the work of her students, poetry books for children, and poet interviews. Her school's "Poetry Postcard Project" for National Poetry Month is in its fourth year with postcards traveling the world. Jone begins her 39th year of teaching this year. She shares her poetry …
Meet Jackie Parker, Young Adult Fiction Chair and Temporary Overlord
Jackie fully believes that her ability to consume great quantities of literature in short periods of time was first fostered by the elementary school program “Book It” which promised a button and free Pizza Hut to those who read enough. It served her well in college, and then again, in 2006 during the inaugural year of the Cybils. Since then, …
Meet Gina Ruiz, Nonfiction MG/YA Chair
Gina Ruiz has Cybils hard-coded into her DNA or at least she thinks so because she's been with the Cybils from the beginning. When she is not living and breathing the Cybils, she is writing; working in a law office and glaring at a certain senior partner about his sentence structure; hanging with her grandkids; eagerly awaiting the arrival of …
Meet Jennifer Wharton, Our New Nonfiction Picture Books Chair
Jennifer is excited to be a first-time category chair for Nonfiction Picture Books. She has been on Cybils panels for three years and is looking forward to being in control. Mwa-ha-ha! When not obsessively reading and reviewing for one of her two blogs, Jean Little Library and Flying Off My Bookshelf she is the youth services librarian for the mid-sized public library …
Meet Karen Yingling, Our New Middle Grade Fiction Chair
A middle aged, middle school librarian from the Midwest, I've been blogging since 2006 at Ms. Yingling Reads. My students are impressed that I've read every hardcover fiction book in our school library, but it was really an evil plan to be allowed to read to my heart's content and be able to tell people to stop bugging me because …
Follow Last Year’s Cybils Winners on Twitter
We noticed that a number of our 2011 Cybils winning authors and illustrators and (for Book Apps) developers are (with varying degrees of activity) on Twitter. Here's a list of the ones that we have found so far. @CallawayDigital (publisher of Book Apps winner The Monster at the End of This Book) @MuttsComics (home of Patrick McDonnell, author of Fiction Picture …
Cybils App Organizer Interviews Author William Joyce
The organizer for the Cybils Book App category, Mary Ann Scheuer, just posted a fabulous interview on her blog with William Joyce, author of The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore. Mary Ann also shares a speech that William Joyce gave about his inspiration for the story, which is currently number one on the New York Times Bestselling Children's Picture Books list. The …
Rest in Peace Margaret Mahy
It's been a sad summer for the children's book community. Scarcely more than a week after the dual losses of Donald J. Sobol and Else Holmelund Minarik, we learned today that Margaret Mahy, author of more than 200 children's books, passed away this weekend at the age of 76. Cybils organizer Gina Ruiz has collected a wide range of tributes to …
Cybils Appreciation from a Well-Loved Author
In the course of today's blog reading, I was pleased to come across a post in which repeat Cybils honoree (and Newbury Honor recipient) Shannon Hale expressed her appreciation for the Cybils. She said: "I've mentioned before my affection for the Cybil Awards, given out by the children's and YA book bloggers. As national and newpaper review space is diminishing, I think book …
New Blog Announcement: Booklights
I am happy to announce the launch of a new children's book blog from PBS Parents, Booklights. Pam Coughlan (MotherReader), Susan Kusel (Wizards Wireless), and I (Jen Robinson) will be working with Gina Montefusco from PBS, along with various guest contributors, to bring literacy and reading content to the PBS Parents audience. The goal of Booklights, in line with the …