Cybils Nominations Open October 1st: How Can You Participate?

Cybils Nominations Open October 1st: How Can You Participate?

Nominations for the third annual Children’s and Young Adult Bloggers’ Literary Awards (the Cybils) will be open Wednesday, October 1st through Wednesday, October 15th. The goal of the Cybils team (some 100 bloggers) is to highlight books that are high in both literary quality and kid appeal. The Cybils were founded by Anne Boles Levy and Kelly Herold.

This year, awards will be given in nine categories (Easy Readers, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Fiction Picture Books, Graphic Novels, Middle Grade Novels, Non-Fiction Middle Grade/Young Adult Books, Non-Fiction Picture Books, Poetry, Young Adult Novels). Anyone can nominate books in these categories (one nomination per person per category). Nominated titles must be published between January 1st and October 15th of this year, and the books must be in English (or bilingual, where one of the languages is English).

To nominate titles, visit the Cybils blog between October 1st and 15th. A separate post will be available for each category – simply nominate by commenting on those individual posts. If you are not sure which category to choose for a particular book, a questions thread will also be available.

Between October 16th and January 1st, Cybils panelists (children’s and young adult bloggers) will winnow the nominations down to a 5-7 book short list for each category. A second set of panelists will then select the winning titles for the different categories. The winners will be announced on February 14th, 2009.

The Cybils lists, from long lists to short lists to the lists of winners, offer a wonderful resource to anyone looking for high-quality, kid-friendly books. The Cybils team has worked hard to balance democracy (anyone can nominate titles) with quality control (two rounds of panel judging by people who focus on children’s books every day). We do this work because we consider it vital to get great books into the hands of children and young adults.

How Can You Participate?

We think that the Cybils nominations will be of interest to parents, teachers, librarians, writers, and teens. If you have a blog or an email list or belong to a newsgroup that serves one of these populations, and you feel that your readers would be interested, please consider distributing this announcement (you are welcome to copy it). The Cybils team would very much appreciate your help in spreading the word. And if you, or the children that you know, have any titles to suggest, we would love to see your nominations at the Cybils blog, starting on Wednesday. Thanks for your help, and stay tuned for further news!

Jen Robinson
Literacy Evangelist for the 2008 Cybils

Big Plans

Big Plans by Bob Shea (Author) and Lane Smith (Illustrator) begins…

SOON…
the entire world will know of my big plans.

Ideas Mini-lesson
Primary/Intermediate: Ask students to write about their own “big plans!” Use the Word Web graphic organizer to brainstorm ideas.

Voice Mini-lesson
Primary/Intermediate: The boy in this story is also the narrator. Ask students to use this first person voice as a model for their own writing.

Take the Intensive Picture Book Workshop for inservice clock hours.

Nonfiction Monday Round-up

Welcome to the Nonfiction Monday Round-up!

Here’s what the kidlitosphere is reading this week…

1. Picture Book of the Day (Kidlit 08)
2. The Well-Read Child (Let’s Clear the Air: 10 Reasons to Not Start Smoking)
3. Abby the Librarian (Horse Song)
4. Check It Out (Wired)
5. Lori Calabrese Writes (Dinosaur Bones)
6. Tricia (An Island Grows)
7. Kiddos and Books (DK Big Book of Airplanes)
8. A Patchwork of Books (Unearthing Ancient Worlds)
9. Wendie’s Wanderings (Nic Bishop Spiders)
10. BookMoot (Ballots for Belva)

Six Trait Writing Programs

Nonfiction Monday: Kidlit 08

On Friday I flew to Portland for the Second Annual Kidlit Bloggers’ Conference and finally met the bloggers I read everyday…in person!

The conference was wonderfully organized by Laini Taylor and Jone MacCulloch. (I’ll be visiting Jone’s school tomorrow.)

On Friday night we went to Powell’s:

At Powell’s, Laini Taylor took this photo of Suzanne Young, Lee Wind , me Jim Di Bartolo (Laini’s husband), Kim Baker, and Pam Coughlan (aka MotherReader).

The conference started bright and early Saturday morning…

and that’s when I started meeting former workshop students! Here I am with Annette Gulati. (She has a great summary of the conference on her blog. )

April Henry and Christine Fletcher were also there – they both took my School Visits 101 Workshop. (Yes, I’m still teaching it – as a self-paced workshop.)

At dinner I sat with former student Lynn Hazen and Rosanne Parry, who I know from the Child_Lit listserv.

Kim Kasch took this photo of Zu Vincent,
Roseanne Parry, and Lisa Schroeder.

In my session for beginning bloggers I had quite a few authors and teachers who wanted to start a blog. (I also teach this as an online workshop.)

Author/artist Laini Taylor and literacy evangelist Jen Robinson had an author/blogger “conversation” session and Jen clarified the difference between an author blogger and a kidlit blogger:

An author blogger blogs about her own work, while a kidlit blogger blogs about the books of many authors. (The same would apply to teacher blogs…)

(So my Book of the Week blog is an author blog and my Picture Book of the Day and Kid Lit Kit “teaching” blogs are kidlit blogs. The blog for my adult writing students, Children’s Book Biz News, is also classified as an “industry” blog.)

Here is a photo of everyone who attended:

Next year we’ll be in Washington, DC… and Pam Coughlan (aka MotherReader) will be our fearless leader!

We won’t wait until then to talk about children’s books. Nominations for the Third Annual CYBILS Awards start on Wednesday! (Nominations are open to the public from October 1-15.) Which books do you think should win? Let us know!

Take the Young Nonfiction Workshop for inservice clock hours.

Poetry Friday: On the Farm

On the Farm by David Elliott (Author) and Holly Meade (Illustrator) is a collection of short animal poems.

The Dog

Sleeps
with
one
eye
open…

Voice Mini-lesson
Primary/Intermediate: Ask students to write a short animal poem. Will they be the animal in the poem (a mask poem) or will they talk about what they see the animal doing?

Word Choice Mini-lesson
Primary/Intermediate: What is the animal feeling? Ask students to use the Observation Chart graphic organizer to brainstorm a list of sensory words for their poem.

This week’s Poetry Friday Round-up is hosted by The Miss Rumphius Effect.

Take the Picture Book Poetry Workshop for inservice clock hours.

Alley Oops

In Alley Oops by Janice Levy (Author) and C. B. Decker (Illustrator), J.J.’s name-calling has consequences.

“Jonathon Jason Jax! Get in here right now!”

“Uh-oh,” J.J. said to himself
“Sounds like trouble.”

Ideas Mini-lesson
Primary/Intermediate: Use this book to begin a discussion about name-calling and bullying. Ask students to write their own story on the topic. 

Conventions Mini-lesson
Primary/Intermediate: When J.J. and his Dad talk about how name-calling hurts other, their dialogue has quotation marks. Ask students to check their stories to make sure they added quotation marks to any conversation.

Take the Easy Reader Workshop. for inservice clock hours.

Trainstop

Trainstop by Barbara Lehman is a wordless book.

Ideas Mini-lesson
Primary/Intermediate: Ask students to write the words for this wordless story. Why does the train stop in the middle of the book? What happens next?

Sentence Fluency Mini-lesson
Primary/Intermediate: Ask students to read their sentences aloud into a tape recorder. When they play it back, do the words flow or do they need to rewrite?

Use the TAKS Writing Secrets Classroom Writing Workshop with your fourth graders.

To Be Like the Sun

To Be Like the Sun by Susan Marie Swanson (Author) and Margaret Chodos-Irvine (Illustrator) begins… 

Hello, little seed,
striped gray seed.
Do you really know everything
about sunflowers?

Organization Mini-lesson
Primary/Intermediate: From seed to shoot to flower and back to seed, this story follows the life cycle of a sunflower. Plant a fast growing seed and ask students to write their own seed-to-plant story.

Voice Mini-lesson
Primary/Intermediate: The narrator talks to her seed in this story. Ask students to use this conversational voice in their seed-to-plant story.

Take the Intensive Picture Book Workshop for inservice clock hours.

Nonfiction Monday Round-up

Welcome to the Nonfiction Monday Round-up!

Here’s what the kidlitosphere is reading this week…

1. Picture Book of the Day (Trout Are Made of Trees)
2. JustOneMoreBook! Podcast (Night Running (How James Escaped with the Help of His
3. The Well-Read Child (Animals at the Edge)
4. Chicken Spaghetti (Elisha Cooper & ridiculous/hilarious/terrible/cool)
5. Shelf Elf (No Girls Allowed)
6. Lori Calabrese Writes (Beaks)
7. Wild Rose Reader (Look What I Did with a Leaf!)
8. Tricia (Hello Matisse! and Hello Rousseau!)
9. Becky (Knucklehead: Tall Tales and Mostly True Stories About Growing Up Scieszka
10. I.N.K. (David Schwartz on Guessing Games)
11. A Patchwork of Books (Helping your World)
12. msmac
13. Fiona at Books and ‘Rocks (Gearing up for the 2008 nonfiction pb Cybils)
14. Jen Robinson (My Name Is Not Isabella)
15. WendieO (Walk-around Tacos )
16. A Patchwork of Books (First Dog)

Six Trait Writing Programs

Nonfiction Monday: Trout Are Made of Trees

Trout Are Made of Trees by April Pulley Sayre (Author) and Kate Endle (Illustrator) explains a food web…

In fall, trees let go of leaves,
which swirl and twirl
and slip into streams.

Organization Mini-lesson
Primary/Intermediate: Ask students to research another food web. Use the Sequence Chart graphic organizer to organize the web.

Word Choice Mini-lesson
Primary/Intermediate: The author added sounds to the story. Ask students to make a list of sounds that living things in their food web could make and add them to their story.

Take the Young Nonfiction Workshop for inservice clock hours.