Meet the 2015 Organizers: Jen Robinson, Literary Evangelist and Social Media Guru

Jen Robinson loves reading, listening to, and recommending books. Although she works in the high tech industry, she feels that she can actually make a difference in the world if she helps parents, teachers, and librarians to connect kids with books. She does this by purchasing books for as many kids in her life as possible, and by reviewing books …

Meet the 2015 Organizers: Sheila Ruth, Publisher Liason

It all started with Harry Potter and homeschooling. After bonding over reading Harry Potter together, kidlit became a family activity. Dad wrote a book, mom (Sheila) published it, and mom and son started a book website, Wands and Worlds, as a homeschooling activity. Blogging followed soon after, which in turn led to the Cybils, which Sheila has been passionately involved …

Meet the 2015 Organizers: Anne Levy, Executive Director

I’m the Cybils spokes-model, getting paid big bucks to show off my glamorous self and sell these sleek awards. Only I don’t get paid, and I’m in my PJs, and the awards are free. I’m not really sure why organizers keep me around a decade after co-founding the awards, actually, except as some sort of mascot. I wave a lot …

Announcing the 2015 Cybils Organizing Team!

While most of the organizing team is returning, we do have a couple of new (well, returning) organizers: Sarah Stevenson from Finding Wonderland | Co-Blog Editor Terry Doherty from The Reading Tub | Fiction Picture Book Category Chair We are happy to welcome Sarah and Terry back! They join the returning organizers: Anne Boles Levy | Executive Director Sheila Ruth | Publisher Liaison and Young Adult Speculative …

The 2014 Cybils Awards

As another Cybils winds to a close, we’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who played a part  in it this year, from the round 1 panelist who spent countless hours reading to the round 2 judges who spent time debating and discussing to choose the winners below to the organizers who spent hours making sure that everything ran …

Exclusive: Cover Reveal, The Temple of Doubt

We’re always excited when anyone in our Cybils community has a new project forthcoming. But, when it’s our Executive Director, the instigator of the Cybils, the boss lady, the tsar (and however many other titles she’s been known by over the years), then it’s something special. Anne’s publisher, Sky Pony Press (an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing), has allowed us, here …

Young Adult Non-fiction – Category Description

Young Adult Nonfiction is not known for being the most glamorous category, perhaps others might say that is fiction. The books in this category do take our readers on journeys and with these journeys; we have the added benefit with knowing they are true. We do not have to ask readers to suspend belief because we know that when we …

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 …

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 …

Book Apps – Category Description

What is a book app? Book apps combine the interactive elements of tablet computers with literature and storytelling. Readers experience the story by interacting with the book. Many book apps provide readers with opportunities to listen to narration and sound effects, read the text on the page, view animation, swipe, tap, record and much more. In the most effective book …