The children's and YA literature community has suffered a major loss: today we found out that Lisa Wolfson, perhaps better known to us as author L.K. Madigan, has lost her battle with pancreatic cancer. Earlier this year, she shared the difficult news in a heartfelt blog post. Today, her agent and friend Jennifer Laughran posted a memorial to her, including …

Our winners aren't the only ones who've been posting lovely things about the Cybils during these heady post-announcement days: Kelly Jensen of Stacked, one of our Round I panelists for YA Fiction, wrote a fantastic and well-worded blog post on Why the Cybils Matter, saying: "If you want a good slice of what the best books of the year were …

As always, we're truly tickled to see the reactions of our Cybils-winning authors and illustrators. Check out what some of them have said over the past few days since the announcement: YA Fiction winner Swati Avasthi tweeted: "HOLY WOW! SPLIT RECEIVED THE #CYBILS AWARD YA (Is it a bird? is it a plane? No, it's an author with a CYBILS award in …

We've got something special on offer this year: Cybils stickers and high-res graphics for award winners! Cybils stickers are nice, shiny, embossed and metallic, just like you'd expect an award sticker to be. The high-resolution graphics are available in your choice of file formats, suitable for full-color printing on future print runs as well as promo materials. Authors, illustrators, publishers, …

I know we're on tenterhooks around here, just bursting with the news–to be revealed TOMORROW!–of this year's Cybil Award winners. I hope you're as excited as we are. If you need a refresher, Elaine Magliaro of Wild Rose Reader, one of our Round I Poetry judges, has put together a really nice roundup post with handy links to all the …

*Contest Alert!* We know that many of you bookish folks are busily setting up displays of Newbery and Caldecott honor books, now that the ALA awards have been announced. We've got a challenge for you, too: Set up a display of Cybils finalists (any of them) and either post a link here in the comments, or send us a photo …

You've no doubt heard by now that the American Library Association's annual Youth Media Award winners were announced yesterday. What you might not have noticed is that a number of our own Cybils finalists were honored during the awards: Dark Emperor by Joyce Sidman (Poetry): Newbery Honor We Are in a Book by Mo Willems (Easy Readers): Geisel Honor Ship …

Ever since posting our finalist lists, we've been incredibly flattered at the outpouring of author Cybils love on blogs, Twitter and elsewhere. Here's a sampling of some of the kudos we've noticed: Jeannine Atkins, Poetry category finalist, blogged about us, saying "what great company to be in." YA authors had a lot to tweet about: click the links to find …

Three cheers for the many bloggers who read through a stack of more than 1,200 books this Cybils season. Our panelists slaved through the autumn months and past Christmas to get a short list in on time. Everyone worked hard. I got ZERO complaints of a panelist vanishing mid-season or dropping out of discussions. Just the opposite — organizers universally …

The finalists are out and we're bidding a fond farewell to the rest of the nominees. But before we move on, here's a few factoids about all the books that somebody loved enough to nominate. Total nominations: 1,285 Percent read by at least one panelist: 98% Percent read by at least two panelists: 94% Only 24 titles weren't read at …