It’s 1:37 a.m. and once again the insomnia genie has cursed me. I get three wishes that won’t come true, and all of them involve being able to shut my eyes. So I thought I’d update you all on how Cybils is going. We still haven’t received the absolute, final, this-is-really-it decision from two categories, but I’m not going to …

I’d like to thank whoever ordered the gluten-free baking flour. I have a brother who’s allergic to wheat, so I empathize. And the person who bought an Epson printer for Christmas–I hope it’s treating you right. You rock.  Hey, remember the sitcom "Soap"? It’s still tickling someone’s funny bone out there in Cybils land. But he or she can’t compare …

Many thanks to Liz for the great article in the School Library Journal e-newsletter about our awards. Our hits are through the roof! And a hearty welcome to SLJ subscribers landing here for the first time. Some quick links for you: Here’s the shortcut to our short lists. And here’s the index to our long lists, which many librarians are …

Most awards competitions make you wait until their final announcement to discover the winner, leading to all sorts of speculation. Not us! We’re going to torture you first. The organizers have given status reports on our tippy-top-secret Yahoo! group, where we hold important discussions about books, make up new rules to contradict the old rules and snicker about what you’re …

Franki Sibberson weeded through 111 picture books to help us find the five best. She writes about her experience as a panelist at Choice Literacy and links to us here. Thanks for the nice press, Franki! We’re glad you enjoyed the experience. As a judge in this same category, I get to pick up where Franki left off. It’s great …

HI All! This is Jen, from Jen Robinson’s Book Page. Since there are more than 80 bloggers directly involved in the Cybils (five judges and five nominating committee members for each of the eight categories, plus organizers), it can be a bit hard to keep up with what they’re all posting about the Cybils. I thought that I would bring …

We’re going to welcome 2007 in a big way here, with the short lists of all eight categories. There’s just one hitch: I set all the posts to begin at 9:15 a.m., but then forgot to change the default from Central time. Whoops! I meant Eastern time. Rather than reset each one, I’m just going to let you suffer a …

Only two more days until we publish the finalists in all eight categories. I wanted to take this time to thank all our hard-working panelists for sifting through roughly 700 books in only six weeks, and to our organizers for birthing this baby in record time and with almost zero complications. But the biggest shout-out goes to Kelly Herold, whose …

Most of us at Team Cybils have spent this holiday season with our noses deep in a book. We’d like to come up for air long enough to wish you all a happy holiday, whereever you are and however you celebrate. We’re sure there’ll be a stack of books under your tree. But if you’re stuck on what to get, …

As Cybils progressed from a gee-whiz comment on Kelly’s blog to a real event with 80 volunteers and nearly 700 books to read, I wondered what it would be like to meet some of the kidlit bloggers helping us. Who are you? What brought you to our contest? What would it be like to sit down and chat with some …