I’m excited to announce that I’ve been selected as one of the round two judges for this year’s Cybils Awards in the category of Elementary/Middle Grade Speculative Fiction!!
What are the Cybils Awards, you ask? Well, they are officially the Children’s and Young Adult Bloggers’ Literary Awards (I’m assuming the I in the acronym was added to make it a name that flows better). As you can guess from that name, this is an award given by the book blogging community. This is the group’s stated mission (via their website):
The Cybils Awards aims to recognize the children’s and young adult authors and illustrators whose books combine the highest literary merit and popular appeal. If some la-di-dah awards can be compared to brussels sprouts, and other, more populist ones to gummy bears, we’re thinking more like organic chicken nuggets. We’re yummy and nutritious.
The awards have been around since 2006, and they’ve built up quite a name for themselves in that time. I’m honored to have been chosen to be a judge! As I said at the top of this post, I’ll be a round two judge for the Elementary/Middle Grade Speculative Fiction category (which is basically sci-fi, fantasy, and contemporary fantasy or magical realism, in case you weren’t aware). That means I’ll be reading the seven or so finalists and discussing them with my fellow round two judges so that we can come up with the winner!
Let me introduce you to my fellow judges:
Round 1
Sonderbooks
Jennifer Miller
RaiseThemRighteous
Beth Mitchell
Imaginary Friends
The Booksearch
Charlotte Taylor
Charlotte’s Library
Round 2
Falling Letters
Rebecca Herzog
Sloth Reads
Mom Read It
Benjamin Martin
Tales of an Elementary School Librarian
You can check out all of the judges from the other categories on the Cybils blog (scroll down a little). You can also check out past winners and finalists if you’re curious.
Want to get involved? We’ll need you to nominate your favorite books in all our categories! You’ll be able to nominate books that were published between Oct. 16, 2018 and Oct. 15, 2019. Nominations open up on October 1st, so get ready!
Do you have any books you’d LOVE to nominate for a Cybils Award? I want to know!
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