Like many children's book bloggers, Dawn Mooney is a mom and her favorite test audience is made up of her three kids. When she writes for the group blog 5 Minutes for Books, you can bet the selected stories have gotten a thumb's up from some very discerning critics. Dawn's also a former preschool teacher, a perspective that we're sure …

I get to feature a fellow Arizonan today. Roberta Gibson's a scientist when she's not book blogging over at Wrapped in Foil. She's judging for us in nonfiction for tweens and teens this year, and she's provided a handy-dandy directory of all her reviews in this genre so far. Bootleg: Murder, Moonshine, and the Lawless Years of Prohibition by Karen …

Today's featured blog gives us a bunch of bonbons — short and sweet — and all Middle Grade Fiction. Karen Yingling organizes her blog, Ms. Yingling Reads, into handy categories such as adventure, history, fantasy or humor. I first heard of her a couple years ago when she emailed my husband at his blog to ask if he could recommend …

Any day now, I shall stop whining about the lack of non-Holocaust kids' books with Jewish characters. Fortunately, I have Charlotte Taylor of Charlotte's Library to point me in the right direction. Charlotte's one of the most prolific and experienced review bloggers in the kidlitosphere, and that's no exaggeration. Her reviews nearly always show the depth and breadth of her …

Shine by Lauren MyracleAmulet Nominated by: Jo Knowles The dust-up over Lauren Myracle's on-again, off-again nomination for a National Book Award at least drew attention to "Shine," a story that tackles some difficult topics. The story's catalyst is a vicious beating in a rural town that leaves a gay teen in a coma. Cat, a close friend, begins asking uncomfortable …

Cathy Potter (no relation to the boy wizard) works her own kind of magic as an elementary school librarian in Falmouth, Maine. She's half of the duo behind The Nonfiction Detectives and I'll bet you'll never guess her favorite genre. Nonfiction! Freaky coincidence, right? Nurse, Soldier, Spy: The Story of Sarah Edmonds, a Civil War Hero by Marissa MossAbrams for …

In the interest of full disclosure, the blogger I'm featuring today has become one of my best virtual friends. We wouldn't have met (okay, we still haven't met, technically) but for Cybils. That's not why I'm putting the spotlight on her blog, though. Tanita Davis has been with us from the start, sifting the wheat from the chaff for the …

Every year at Cybils we comb through our judges' blogs looking for book reviews. Or we comb through the lists of books looking for reviewers. Either way, we kill two birds with one stone by highlighting both a nominee and one of our bloggers. For the first review of the 2011, we're showing off our newest genre, Book Apps, and …

Kyle Kimmal, one of our Round I judges for Middle Grade Fiction, blogs at The Boy Reader. He's a third grade teacher, so he looks at a lot of books of interest to younger readers, but he also reviews other titles of interest to boys. (And getting more boys to read is definitely a good thing!) Kyle recently posted about …

Today's featured review comes from Tasha Saecker's long-running blog Kids Lit, which has been active since 2003. Tasha, who is the director of the Menasha Public Library in Wisconsin, is an old hand around the Cybils, and she's been a category organizer as well as a judge. She reviews everything from board books to YA novels, and this year she's …