What’s your favorite book? What are your top 5 books for [insert year]? Who is your favorite [genre] author? As a reader, you already know how hard it is to answer these questions. Now, imagine being in a group with six avid readers like yourself, having to lift up 5-7 books from hundreds of titles each of you just finished …
Future Tense
With the dawn of a new year upon us, what better time to introduce a collection of books that explore the future. These books are about the future. And some of them are tense (read: big, heavy subjects). True stories and (science) fictional tales. Subjects rooted in the last century, and some in dimensions beyond ours. Good guys and bad …
Wind, Weather & Other Natural Forces | #CYBILS2024 Book List
What is it about the weather? Extreme or mundane, it always gives us something to talk about! [There’s even a television commercial about our weather addiction.] So of course we had to create a book list featuring Mother Nature in all her glory. True stories of survival in extreme conditions Weather allegory and poetry. People whose lives and careers were …
A Pirate’s Life for Thee | #CYBILS2024 Book List
Did we go a little overboard with this collection of book choices? Yes. Yes we did. But look at these treasures! Landlubbers and seafarers alike are sure to find something in this xx of seaworthy tales from nonfiction board books to mythical serpents of Filipino folklore (YA Speculative). Perfect your pirate voice! Nod off to sleep with narwhals and guillemots, …
A Tapestry of Tales: Folklore from Around the World #CYBILS2024 Book List
What we love about this year’s collection of nominated and submitted folklore is the rich diversity of the cultures represented. [See list below]. Readers are immersed in Legends that are centuries old but freshly told. Tales with magic to capture the imagination. Stories where natural and unexplained worlds collide. through stories told visually in graphic novels and picture books, …
Melanin in Motion | #CYBILS2024 Book List
Keep moving … do what moves you … move forward … you get the idea. In these stories you will find girls and women of color in motion: on the sports field, on the stage, and over, under, and through whatever speedbumps came their way. With a few exceptions, each of the books in this collection are suitable for audiences …
SWISH! Books for Basketball Fans #CYBILS2024
No matter what level you play, basketball season is underway. And these books? Well, they’re a slam dunk for fans of the game and those who are fascinated by the history of the sport. *There are superstars kids know … and stats they don’t. * Meet trailblazers in the women’s and men’s games, whose stories are told vividly in picture …
Wish Books: Judges’ Recommendations for Book Gifting
Does anyone remember the days when we couldn’t wait for the <insert merchant name> Wish Book (aka Christmas catalog) to arrive in our mailbox so that we could start our personal wish list of gifts we wanted? The days of snail mail mega-catalogs are long gone, but that doesn’t mean we don’t hope for things … like great books kids will …
You Crack Me Up: Fractured Fairy Tales
Sorry, we couldn’t resist. So what’s on this list? Stories and characters you – and the kiddos in your life – know well. Humpty Dumpty Three Little Pigs Big Bad Wolf Beauty and the Beast And a good old-fashioned princess mashup!Beastly Beauty by Jennifer Donnelly {Beauty and the Beast} Young Adult Speculative Fiction nominee Reading Age: 12 and Up The …
Play Ball! 3 Books @ Women in Baseball
“There’s no crying in baseball!” Did you say that in your head (or outloud voice) when you saw the post title? That line from A League of Their Own has to be one of the most quoted sports movie references around. [If we’re off base, let us know!] So what does that famous line have to do with this trio …