Random Musings of a Bibliophile

The ALA Youth Media Awards are on Monday. I'm as excited as ever even if in recent years I haven't had the bandwidth to read as many of the talked about books or engage in any of the lead up conversations. However, I have some 2019 books I would love to see recognized in some way on Monday. They are: I'll be watching the livestream Monday morning and missing the energy of that room!

Today is the day I'm on a plane to Atalanta to attend the American Library Association's Midwinter Meeting. The height of Midwinter every year is the Monday morning announcements of the Youth Media Awards. Monday morning we will learn the winners of the 2017 Newbery, Caldecott, Printz, and the many other awards given by ALSC and YALSA. I feel like I am way out of sync with the majority of kidlit aficionados this year so I fear I  may not see many of my favorites get nods. What I would most like to see come away with a shiny Newbery sticker: What I would most like to see come away with a shiny Printz sticker: I don't have many strong opinions on the other awards. This was a super off year for me in a lot of respects. I'm rather hoping this weekend renews my excitement and energy.  Does anyone else have any favorites for Monday morning? 

Cybils nominations have been underway a week. We still have a week to go! Here are some eligible books in the MG Speculative Fiction category that are eligible that haven't been nominated yet. If you haven't nominated yet, get moving! ( Go here .)

The 2016 Cybils Judges were announced today. I am so happy to be back on MG Speculative Fiction this year. I'm a Round One Panelist which means all of my reading is about to become Middle Grade Science-Fiction and Fantasy. I will be working with these lovely ladies: Charlotte Taylor from Charlotte's Library Sherry Early from Semicolon Kristen Harvey from The Book Monsters Brenda Tjaden from Log Cabin Library What's next? Nominations for the Cybils open on October 1st. Start making your lists of books you want to nominate. Books need to have a US publishing date of October 16, 2015-October 15, 2016.

The call for judges for the 2016 Children and Young Adult Bloggers' Literary Awards is out! The Cybils Award process happens in two rounds and they need a lot of volunteer judges to make this work. Do you: love children's and youth literature? read a lot of it? blog about it? like discussing it? want to get to know other kidlit enthusiasts? If so, you will find being a Cybils judge a lot of fun. I have been a Round One panelist the last three years (two in MG Speculative Fiction and one in MG Fiction) and can say I was able to all of the above and throughly enjoyed it.  If you are interested in this, you will find the application here .

I confessed in my looking ahead post on Friday that I was nervous about this year's awards. Last year was an amazing year in which so many committees thought outside the box and broke new ground. The winners across the board were so diverse. I was nervous because I didn't want a return to the status quo. And I am so pumped that we didn't get one. A PICTURE BOOK WON THE NEWBERY!!!!!! Congratulations Matt De La Peña!!! This book also won a Caldecott Honor. Newbery Honors include: Echo, The War That Saved My Life, and Roller Girl I LOVE Roller Girl. It is by far my favorite graphic novel of 2015. I didn't list it in my hopes for the award because I honestly didn't think that the committee would award a graphic novel two years in a row. I've never been happier to be wrong. My daughter squealed and bounced so hard at this announcement. I read this book in the first place because she literally followed me around the house with it for days begging me to. ...

Monday is the day. The Academy Awards of children's literature will occur in Boston at 8:00 AM. The past two years I've had the privilege of being in the room when they were announced. There is nothing quite like that experience, and if  you ever get the chance to attend, I highly recommend it. This year I will be watching the live stream at home with my kids. (They look forward to this and have missed it the past couple of years when I've been gone.) I will also be live tweeting it as always. Here I will share my hopes for this year's winners. (NOT PREDICTIONS. Hopes.) This is an odd year for me. I find myself with no book I absolutely want to win the Newbery this year. Much to my dismay there are more books I have a fervent desire to see NOT win. I don't know if this is due to my massive reading slump this year (or if the books are the cause of the reading slump). It's possibly due to the some of the stuff I've seen go down in the wider community this y...

Another year of working as a first round Cybils panelist has come to an end. This year I worked on the MG Realistic Fiction panel. Here are the books we chose to move on to the final round: I can't wait to see which one of these books is chosen by the round two judges! Here are my reviews for  Blackbird Fly , The Blackthorn Key , and Listen, Slowly You can see all of the Cybils Finalists here .  As always when you are serving on a committee, there are books that I loved, but didn't necessarily make the final cut for whatever reason. Here are some of the ones that I read that got away: