Novels may get all the glory, but we know that truth is stranger than fiction any day of the week. We’re currently in a golden age of nonfiction. Forget the dry stuff they used to read in school to help with homework–today’s authors understand how important a great nonfiction piece of writing is to both students and teachers, both for …

It seems like everyone is reading comics now, and it’s no wonder: a picture is worth a thousand words. Using serial artwork to tell the tale, graphic novels bring stories and information to all ages and genres.  Here at Cybils, we’re interested in the best graphic novels published over the past year. Submit your nominations for elementary/middle grade (approximately ages …

What is Poetry?  verse written for children and young adults  The audience can be toddlers, preschoolers, elementary, middle grade, or young adult.  What belongs in Poetry?  anthologies or collections written by multiple authors anthologies or collections written by a single author Novels in verse or verse novels Some poetry will have illustrations. Some will not.  Poetry does accept eBook nominations.  …

Middle grade fiction is realistic fiction for pre-teen readers ranging in age from 8 to 12 with protagonists who are around the same age as the reader. These characters are beginning to be more aware of the wider world around them, as well as changes in themselves and their friends as they begin to mature. Pre-teen characters are dealing with …

This past year has seen another excellent crop of wonderfully inventive speculative fiction books for kids! Along with the expected spells and space rockets and aliens, this is the category for books with talking animals, time-travel, ghosts, and paranormal abilities, and all the other books that might not have obvious magic on every page, and which are set here on …

Kids are curious about the world around them and nonfiction is the perfect way to introduce them to that amazing world. History? Biography? Art? Science? Math? Animals? Sports? It’s all here and more besides! We love text and illustrations or photographs that will wow kids and adults alike and topics so fascinating that kids will want to go digging for …

The Easy Reader/Early Chapter Book category of the Cybils covers the whole spectrum of titles for early elementary kids who are learning to read, from the very basic books for emergent readers to longer, illustrated titles for kids who are not quite ready for novels. What we’re looking for in easy reader nominations are leveled readers with controlled vocabularies that …

Board Books Just say the phrase “board book” and you’re bound to hear an “awww” or a “that’s so cute!” It happens in my house all the time (even with the teenager)! We share these books with our youngest readers to be. These are our child’s first stories – at playtime, before nap, and as bedtime stories. Opening a board …

Speculative Fiction takes us to realms of the imagination: places and times and realities where the rules of life may be different than our own and where the impossible and improbable become real. But good science fiction and fantasy does more than that: it asks, “What if?” It makes us think. It holds up a mirror to our own society …

The world as it was and is. Not as it could, or would, or should be. Send the dystopias and space operas, the fairies and angels, the blood-suckers, zombies, and alternate realities to Speculative Fiction. In YA Fiction we are looking for realistic fiction, be it contemporary or historical, funny or mysterious, romantic or adventurous. We want the real world …