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Cybils 2020 – Update

January 13, 2021 |

In case you missed it, the Cybils finalists were announced January 1! I’m excited to be judging round 2 of graphic novels this year, which means I get to help select TWO winners – one for Elementary/Middle Grade and one for YA. I haven’t read any of the finalists this year (due to having basically read Nothing last year), so I’m excited to dive into these great books. For a look at the graphic novel finalists only, go here.

While I and my fellow judges read and discuss the finalists, we have to be pretty hush hush about our thoughts on them, though I hope to have reviews of them up here after the winners are announced February 14. But I can talk all I want to about the finalists in other categories.

I’m particularly pleased to see that Yasmin the Gardener by Saadia Faruqi is a finalist in the Easy Reader category. We love Yasmin at my library, and this series is one I recommend to early readers all the time. The same goes for Mindy Kim and the Yummy Seaweed Business in the Early Chapter Book category; Lyla Lee’s series is one that’s consistently good and a great pick for kids just getting into chapters.

I’ve been a frequent panelist or judge in the Young Adult Speculative Fiction category, so I was especially curious to see what books the panelists chose this year. While I haven’t read any of them yet, many of them are on my to read list: Burn by Patrick Ness, Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger, and Legendborn by Tracy Deonn.

I actually think the announcement of the finalists is more exciting than the winner – the seven books chosen as finalists are always a surprise, and they’re often under the radar titles that deserve more acclaim. My to read list always grows after the announcement; I hope yours does too.

 

 

Filed Under: cybils

Cybils 2020

October 7, 2020 |

I almost didn’t apply to be a part of the Cybils Awards this year. Despite the lockdown, I feel like I have more going on and less energy to tackle it with. However, I’m glad I did apply – I’m serving as a Round 2 judge for graphic novels this year, which includes comics for both kids and teens. Nominations are currently open, so this is my annual post asking you to nominate. You can nominate one title per category. Read about the process and nominate here. Nominations close October 15.

If you need a few suggestions for the graphic novel category, here are some I’d like to read or possibly consider for the win in Round 2. As of the time I’m writing this (Tuesday afternoon), none of these titles have been nominated, but check before you submit yours to ensure it’s not a duplicate.

 

Elementary & Middle Grade

Shirley & Jamila Save Their Summer by Gillian Goerz

Donut the Destroyer by Sarah Graley and Stef Purenins

Jo: An Adaptation of Little Women (Sort Of) by Kathleen Gros

Dungeon Critters by Natalie Riess and Sara Goetter

Diana: Princess of the Amazons by Shannon Hale, Dean Hale, and Victoria Ying

Lily the Thief by Janne Kukkonen

Dewdrop by Katie O’Neill

The Tea Dragon Tapestry by Katie O’Neill

Aster and the Accidental Magic by Thom Pico

History Comics: The Roanoke Colony: America’s First Mystery by Chris Schweizer

Doodleville by Chad Sell

Pea, Bee, and Jay Stuck Together by Brian “Smitty” Smith

Crabapple Trouble by Kate Vandorn

Kerri and the Night of the Forest by Andi Watson

Seance Tea Party by Reimena Yee

 

Young Adult

The Phantom Twin by Lisa Brown

Black Canary Ignite by Meg Cabot

The Blue Road: A Fable of Migration by Wayde Compton

Flamer by Mike Curato

Fights by Joel Christian Gill

The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen

The Oracle Code by Marieke Nijkamp

Heartstopper by Alice Oseman

Bloom by Kevin Panetta

You Brought Me the Ocean by Alex Sanchez

A Girl Called Echo vol. 3: Northwest Resistance by Katherena Vermette

The Mars Challenge by Alison Wilgus

Witchlight by Jessi Zabarsky

Filed Under: book awards, cybils

Cybils Spiderweb 2019 (updated)

January 1, 2020 |

Another Cybils season has come to an end (at least, my role in it has). Later today, the finalists my team chose in the YA speculative fiction category will go live. I’m excited to see readers’ and authors’ reactions, and I’m also eager to see which books made the cut in other categories. To celebrate, I added to the Cybils Spiderweb I created a few weeks ago, updating it with more books and more connections. I hope you enjoy perusing it as much as I enjoyed creating it.

Filed Under: cybils

A Few Cybils Reads – Part 4 (2019)

December 11, 2019 |

Wilder Girls by Rory Power

Power’s debut is a bestseller and I know a lot of readers have loved it, but it didn’t work for me. It’s a dystopia-type story set in the near future at a school for girls called Raxter. It’s not much of a school anymore since the island where the school is located was hit with the Tox, a mysterious illness that causes body deformations (like an extra external spinal cord) and erratic, violent behavior in its victims. The girls have been promised that the Navy and the US government are working on a cure, but in the meantime they’re restricted to the island and sent a few meager supplies every so often. When Hetty’s best friend Byatt disappears, she and her other friend/new love interest Reese team up to find her, discovering a few secrets and lies along the way.

Many other readers have praised the writing as well as the plot, but I found neither particularly engaging. I’m surprised this has garnered so much positive attention this long after dystopian YA’s heyday. There’s nothing especially interesting or revelatory about the girls’ situation at Raxter, and the hand-wavey explanation for the Tox at the end is almost insulting in its generality.  The only really fresh thing it offers in terms of plot is the body horror, which doesn’t do anything for me as a reader but I’m sure fascinates others. Contrary to other reviewers, I didn’t really observe anything particularly feminist about the story (though it’s not anti-feminist either). I did appreciate that Power included a romance between two girls (Hetty and Reese).

 

Aurora Rising by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

Instead of attending the draft where he would be able to handpick his team for the Aurora Legion, a futuristic spacefaring version of the United Nations, Tyler Jones followed a wayward distress signal and rescued Aurora O’Malley from the the space fold.  She had been trapped there in stasis for the past two centuries, the only survivor from a ship on its way to colonize one of the many new worlds that had been discovered thanks to fold technology. As a result of missing the draft, Tyler – the top Alpha at the Academy – was stuck with the dregs, the recruits no one else wanted. His twin sister Scarlet, the designated diplomat, stuck with him, as did his best friend and pilot Kat, but the other three members of his new team (including two aliens of separate species) are…less than stellar. Things get off to a rocky start when the team is sent on its first mission, a throwaway job that appears almost meaningless. And then Aurora shows up, an unwelcome stowaway who not only seems to have uncontrollable superpowers, but is also being hunted by a group of truly scary Earth enforcers who will stop at nothing to get to her.

This is a high-concept, high-action thriller of a space adventure that doesn’t skimp on its characters. As readers will expect, the prickly team bonds over time, eventually becoming each others’ found family. I loved a lot of the world-building touches, like the fact that just before first contact with aliens, religion on Earth had pretty much died out, but the discovery of so many different alien species (and their remarkable similarities to humans and each other – all bipedal, all carbon-based, and so on) prompted humans to create a new unified religion. Kaufman and Kristoff do a really solid job with the two main alien cultures, too, which are distinct and have their own complex culture and histories.

The audio production is pretty great. Told in rotating point of view chapters, each team member (including Aurora) is voiced by a different reader, and the voices of the masked villains are modulated so they sound mechanized and extra-creepy. One main character, Kat, is Australian, and while the reader for her does a good job with the accent (at least to my ears), the others are pretty bad at it, to the point that it drew me out of the story a lot. Other than that, though, this is an above-average audiobook, a real treat for listeners who enjoy full cast productions.

 

Filed Under: cybils, Reviews, Science Fiction, ya, ya fiction, Young Adult

Cybils Spiderweb 2019

December 4, 2019 |

I’m deep into my Cybils reading for this year, with a total of 20 books read in full and many others begun. When I read so many books in such a short period of time, it’s easy to pick up on similarities, patterns, and trends. As in previous years, I made note of these and organized them into a sort of mind map that I call a spiderweb. Some of the common themes this year have been stories set in France, gods who meddle in human affairs, and a whole lot of warrior girls. I anticipate the spiderweb will grow over the next few weeks, and I hope to provide a final version sometime after the announcement of our shortlist in January.

Filed Under: cybils

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