sprite writes
broodings from the burrow

September 19, 2012


exciting news of a bookish nature
posted by soe 2:55 am


The Cybil Awards, for those who don’t know, determine the best publications of the previous year according to bloggers who review kiddie, middle grade, and young adult (YA) books. Winners are selected in ten categories.

On Monday, the judges were announced, and I can now tell you that I’ve been selected to be one! I can’t begin to explain how excited I am about this. But let’s say it’s like Christmas morning when you’re standing in front of all your wrapped presents.

I am serving on the young adult fiction panel* (my first choice!), which includes all fiction aimed at older teens except for fantasy and science fiction. That has its own panel.

I’ll be reading the first round nominees (the longlist, if you will), which come from the public starting Oct. 1. (Don’t worry. I’ll remind you.) The chair estimates we’ll each have to tackle 75 books in the next three months, so I’m hoping no one was looking forward to homemade Christmas presents this year. By the end, we’ll have winnowed 200ish books down to a short list (countable on two hands), which we’ll exhaustedly hand off to the second round panel.

I’m particularly excited because the group of people I am working with seem really nice and knowledgeable, and their blogs offer a wide variety of book reviews to peruse. I was aware of several of them, but most are new to me.

These are the folks I’ll be reading with directly:

Round 1

Leila Roy 
Bookshelves of Doom 
@bkshelvesofdoom

Sarah Gross
The Reading Zone
@thereadingzone

Kellie Tilton 
The Re-Shelf  
@thereshelf 

William Polking 
Guys Lit Wire  
@Polking

Clementine Bojangles
Early Nerd Special 
@clemmybojangles

Kendall Kulper 
Blogging for YA
@Kendall_Kulper

And these are the people who determine the ultimate winner:

Round 2

Maureen Kearney 
Confessions of a Bibliovore  
@mosylu

Maureen Eichner 
By Singing Light 
@elvenjaneite

Adrianne Russell 
The Writer's Republic
@writersrepublic

Michelle Castleman 
The Hungry Readers  
@ShelTheProf

Jessica Silverstein 
Reading on the F Train
@SilversteinELA

Without a doubt you will hear more about the Cybils in the weeks to come. I can’t wait!


*I know the Cybils site uses my real name, but let’s not go spreading it around, okay? Sprite I have been, and Sprite I remain.

Category: books. There is/are 8 Comments.



Super cool! Congrats on participating this year, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the nominees!!

Comment by Mikaiya 09.19.12 @ 9:03 am

What fun! Thanks in advance for your hard work winnowing down the list, so that the rest of us can just have the best of the best presented to us tied up with a neat little bow.

Comment by Shani 09.19.12 @ 9:38 am

The books will be (figuratively) tied up, that is. The nonjudges won’t be tied up.

Well, some of us might be, if that’s our/their thing, but, speaking only for myself, I won’t be.

Comment by Shani 09.19.12 @ 9:41 am

Wow, that’s a lot of books! I hope none of them are *too* long! Those of us in round two will be cheering you on. I can’t wait to see what you guys pick out!

Comment by Jessica Silverstein 09.19.12 @ 12:58 pm

[…] the Cybils news is the most lovely thing that’s happened to me this week, but it’s not the only one. […]

Pingback by sprite writes 09.21.12 @ 12:35 am

@Mikaiya: Thank you! I’m looking forward to sharing what I find.

@Shani: I know! I’m super excited about getting started with the reading! (I also won’t be tied up.)

Comment by soe 09.21.12 @ 1:00 am

@Jessica: I know! I’m a little intimidated, but still really psyched! And I’ll be very interested to see what your Round 2 panel picks.

Comment by soe 09.21.12 @ 1:02 am

[…] of course, am particularly interested in your recent young adult fiction titles, but I’ll be interested to see what titles get […]

Pingback by sprite writes 10.02.12 @ 1:38 am