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 …
Category Description: Graphic Novels
It seems like everyone is reading comics now, and 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 5-12) …
Category Description: Poetry
Poetry 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 …
Category Descriptions: Elementary/Middle Grade Speculative Fiction
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 …
Category Description: Elementary/Middle Grade Non-Fiction
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 …
Category Description: Easy Reader/Early Chapter Books
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 …
Category Description: Fiction Picture Books
Colorful. Beautiful. Funny. Poignant. Amazing. Pick your word. These are the stories – with and without words – that can capture our hearts and mind, whether we are two or 92! Fiction Picture Books are a show and tell art form. They introduce young readers to their worlds, present and past; take us on fantastic journeys, real and imagined; offer …
Category Description: 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 book to …
Young Adult Fiction Category Description
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 Seculative 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 …
Young Adult Speculative Fiction Category Description
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 …