As we head into another fall Cybils season, we want to express our gratitude in advance. We know that the blogging landscape has changed over the 12 years we’ve been and we want to say a huge THANK YOU to those who have volunteered to help us with this award. We appreciate your willingness, your time, and your expertise. And …
You’ve Missed Us, Haven’t You?
And you knew we’d be back about this time of year, didn’t you? We’ve been doing some moving and shaking and discussing and recruiting and we’re almost ready for the 2018 Cybils season! Keep an eye on this space: we’re going to be calling for panelists and judges (and nominations) SOON!
Interview with Martin Sandler
Editor’s note: This interview was conducted via phone by our Junior High/Senior High Non-Fiction Chair, Jennie Rothschild. We’d like to thank her for her time in putting this together! I was lucky enough to talk to Martin Sandler on the phone about his winning book, The Whydah. Below is a transcript of our conversation, edited for length and clarity. In …
Interview with Dori Hillestad Butler
You write a lot of mystery stories for emerging readers. What are the challenges in creating a satisfying mystery for that reading level? Creating a simple mystery isn’t really a challenge for me, but sometimes I struggle with word count. There’s a pattern to the King & Kayla books. Each one has five chapters. The first chapter sets up the …
Interview with Deborah Heiligman
What drew you to the story of Vincent Van Gogh and his brother, Theo? I was on a trip to Amsterdam and visited the Van Gogh Museum because I’ve always loved his art. While there, I read a small note about Theo supporting Vincent, and I knew that someday I would write about these brothers. When I presented the idea …
Interview with Scott Westerfeld and Alex Puvilland
How did the creative process work for the two of you in putting the book together? Was there a lot of back-and-forth, or did you do your parts independently? SW: My strip was pretty detailed, but Alex was always keen to suggest new pages, mostly in sequences set in the Zone. Thanks to him, we spend more time exploring that …
Interview with Renée Watson
What inspired Jade’s story? I wanted to tell a story that explored the intersections of race, class, and gender. Jade is a little bit of me, a little bit of the girls I met when I worked as a mentor, and a lot of my imagination. I also wanted to set her in Portland, Oregon, where I grew up. The …
Interview with Suzanne Selfors
How did you come up with the idea of a superhero dog and an evil genius guinea pig? This book came about in a different way than any of my other books. I’d been working with an editor at Harper Collins named Melissa Miller on an IP project and she shared an idea with me. She’d come up with these …
Interview with Alan Gratz
Was Refugee always set up as three person narrative? Were their stories always connected? Refugee began for me with the story of the MS St. Louis. For those who haven’t read Refugee yet, the St. Louis was a passenger ship that left Nazi Germany in 1939 with more than 900 Jewish refugees on board, bound for Cuba. The St. Louis didn’t end up …
Interview with Ammi-Joan Paquette and Laurie Thompson
This book is all about solid researching techniques. Where did you start digging once you had the idea for the book? Or did plans for a series come partway through the research phase? Joan: The idea for this book first sprang out of the abundance of exciting and unbelievable true stories that we saw around us in the news and …