Welcome to the inaugural CYBILS Awards Book Playlist. If you love listening to music as you read, these posts are for you! Each post pairs a curated Spotify playlist with one CYBILS Awards finalist or winner. If you have a playlist request, be sure to drop us a line at cybilsawards [at] gmail [dot] com. DEAR JUSTYCE: A NOVEL (Dear Martin …
#Cybils2022 Idea Boards are here!
Last summer we launched the first-ever CYBILS Awards Idea Boards using padlet.com. Our goal: create a place where readers can share their favorite recent reads. Books they can’t stop talking about. Titles they want other readers to discover for themselves. Books they think might have some award-worthy potential. The Idea Boards turned out to be not just a place to …
#CybilsAwards Backlist Book List Summer: It’s a Wrap
Last week we posted our last Backlist Book List for 2021. We hope you have had as much fun exploring the curated lists as we had in creating them! Nine lists: 6 read-alike lists, 3 themed lists. Ten years of nominations, finalists, and winners. 154 recommended books for readers toddler to teen. What made them particularly fun was discovering books …
#CybilsAwards Backlist Book List: So You Want To Learn Magic
Charlotte Taylor, Chair for our Elementary/Middle Grade Speculative Fiction category, has conjured this week’s Backlist Book List. And dare we say it? It’s magical. There. We said it. If you know a young reader who dreams of spells and wishes for magic skills, this is the book list for you. Meet Eva Evergreen! We’ll let Kristin Harvey, who blogs at …
#CybilsAwards Backlist Book List: Verse Novels
We’re turning over the Backlist Book List reigns to Gary Anderson, who chairs the Young Adult Fiction category. He has some recommendations for verse novels that, like Cybils 2020 Finalist Punching the Air by Ibi Zoboi and Yusef Salaam, deal with tough contemporary societal issues. As Gary explains: This is not poetry for the butterflies and sunflowers set but tough …
#CybilsAwards Backlist Book List: Dino-might
Does anyone else remember that one-word exclamation from a 1970s show called Good Times? Here’s a little trivia for you: Jimmie Walker, the character who used that phrase, also used it in a series of Panasonic commercials for, wait for it … cassettes and 8-track tapes. [Source: Wikipedia] So, as you’ve probably already guessed, our “din-o-might” is a bit different …
#CybilsAwards Backlist Book List: Pivoting Pandemic Reads
It’s either emblematic of the COVID-19 pandemic or the most over-used word of 2020. Either way, we couldn’t resist using it for this week’s Backlist Book List! We promise it is more riveting than pivoting. Laurie Halse Anderson’s award-winning book Fever 1793 was published in 2000, six years before the Cybils Awards launched. It is a historical fiction novel about …
#CybilsAwards Backlist Book List: #BatterUp
In a little less than a week, baseball fans will be celebrating the 91st Midsummer Classic, also known as Major League Baseball’s 2021Â All-Star Game. Last year, because of the pandemic, this annual event didn’t happen. But this year, well … we’re ready! To help get ready for the big game, let’s have some fun with a little trivia. âš¾ …
#CybilsAwards Backlist Book List for #SharkWeek 🦈
First let’s mark our calendar: July 11, 2021. Shark Week. Less than two weeks away. You probably already know that #SharkWeek was created by the Discovery channel, but did you know … Caged in Fear, the first Shark Week episode, premiered on 17 July 1988? Sometimes Shark Week is in August, not July? From 2005-2011 shark lovers could purchase DVD …
Backlist Book List: #STEM + #DiverseBooks For Young Creators
In 2019, Frankie Sparks and the Class Pet by Megan Frazer Blakemore won the Cybils Award in the Early Chapter Book. In selecting Frankie Sparks as a finalist, the panelists said:Â Â Â … This promising first book in a series will have children learning about animals, design thinking, and emotional intelligence while turning the pages to meet the new pet. …