Tuesday, October 11, 2016

Have you got your nominations in yet?

There's just 5 days left to nominate your favorite books of the year for the Cybils awards!  If you haven't yet, head over to the Cybils blog right now to submit your favorites.

About this time each year, the Cybils blog collects lists of items that haven't been nominated yet, but
someone would like to see still make the list.  If you haven't used of your one item per category nomination yet, you might want to peruse the lists to see if you can help someone out.

As I mentioned in my last post, I'm judging in the new audiobook category this year, and we could still really use some nominations!  So I thought I'd put together this list of things I found on audible that are definitely eligible.

And if none of these float your boat, remember that most books nominated in another Cybils category this year that has an audio version available is eligible for the audiobook category.  Even if you haven't listened to the audio version, but you know the book is good, then it might still deserve and audio nomination.

Here's some audiobooks that are eligible based on their date and the middle grade criteria for this year.  I haven't read all of these yet, but if you have read any of these and you loved it, consider nominating it for our category.  Hopefully this list helps you think of a great audiobook nomination!

A Most Magical Girl by Karen Foxlee
All Four Stars by Tara Dairman
Audacity Jones to the Rescue by Kirby Larson
Book Scavenger by Jennifer Chambliss Bertman
Case of the Girl in Grey by Jordan Stratford
Disenchanted: The Trials of Cinderella by Megan Morrison
Foxheart by Claire Legrand 
Frazzled: Everyday Disasters and Impending Doom by Booki Vivat 
Fuzzy by Tom Angleberger
Going Wild by Lisa McMann
Grayling's Song by Karen Cushman
Grounded by Megan Morrison
Hour of the Bees by Lindsay Eagar 
I Survived the Eruption of Mount St. Helens, 1980 by Lauren Tarshis
Impyrium by Henry H Neff
It Ain't So Awful, Falafel by Firoozeh Dumas
Knights of the Borrowed Dark by Dave Rudden
Lock and Key by Ridley Pearson
Look Out for the Fitzgerald-Trouts by Esta Spalding
Milo Speck, Accidental Agent by Linda Urban
Moo by Sharon Creech
Mr. Lemoncello's Library Olympics by Chris Grabenstein
Ned's Circus of Marvels by Justin Fisher
Once Upon a Toad by Heather Vogel Frederick
Out of Abaton by John Claude Bemis
Pax by Sara Pennypacker
Red: The True Story of Red Riding Hood by Liesl Shurtliff 
Save Me A Seat by Sarah Weeks
Shadow Magic by Joshua Khan
Six Kids and a Stuffed Cat by Gary Paulsen
Slacker by Gordon Korman 
Sting: A Loot Novel by Jude Watson
Summerlost by Ally Condie
Sweet Home Alaska by Carole Estby Dagg
The Adventurer's Guide to Successful Escapes by Wade Albert White
The Candymakers and the Great Chocolate Chase by Wendy Mass
The Case of the Vanishing Emerald by Holly Webb
The Charmed Children of Rooksill Castle by Janet Fox
The Dala Horse by Lissa Jonston
The Door by the Staircase by Katherine March 
The Firefly Code by Megan Frazer Blakemore
The Girl in the Well Is Me by Karen Rivers 
The Girl Who Could Not Dream by Sarah Beth Durst 
The Glass Castle by Trisha Priebe
The Haunting of Falcon House by Eugene Yelchin
The Lincoln Project by Dan Gutman
The Scourge by Jennifer Nielson
The Secret Keepers by Trenton Lee Stewart
The Secret of Dreadwillow Carse by Brian Farrey 
The Trilogy of Two by Juman Malouf
Time Stoppers by Carrie Jones
Time Traveling With a Hamster by Ross Welford
True Heroes: A Treasury of Modern-Day Fairy Tales Written by Bestselling Authors
Warren the 13th and the All-Seeing Eye by Tania del Rio
What Elephants Know by Eric Dinerstein
When Friendship Followed Me Home by Paul Griffin
Will Wilder: The Relic of Perilous Falls by Raymond Arroyo
Wish by Barbara O'Connor 
Wishing Day by Lauren Myracle
Wolf Hollow by Lauren Wolk

Thursday, October 06, 2016

It's that time again...

I'm a few days behind on announcing this, but things have been crazy the past few weeks.  In addition to getting the usual autumn cold, helping mom continue to recover from surgery, and trying to keep up with things at work, we also bought a new car.  Which came with its own long weeks of shopping and deal wrangling.  O.o

Anyway, things are getting back to normal for me, and a few days ago the Cybils Awards opened up for nominations!  For those of you who are not familiar with the Cybils, they are the Children's and Young Adult Literary Blogging awards.  Basically it's the kidlitosphere's blogging version of the literary merit of awards like the Newberry medal combined with the popular vote of the Webby Awards.  The biggest criteria for the Cybils is both good writing/literary merit and kid appeal.

I'm happy to be participating again as a Round 1 judge this year, in a brand new category, audiobooks!  It will be fun to break ground in this new area for the Cybils.

The biggest part of the "popular vote" section of the awards is now.  The awards accept nominations for books in 11 categories from people just like you!  So if you have a favorite book for kids or teens published in the last year, make sure you go nominate it.

We especially need audiobook nominations!  So even if audiobooks aren't your thing, if you have a book that you want to nominate (or has already been nominated) in either of the middle grade categories this year, all you have to do is check if it has an audio version to qualify for the new category.  I found tons of great possible nominations on audible.com, there's lots that will qualify.

Happy reading everyone!