I've been going through the Cybils 2008 nomination lists this evening and considering what is missing. I've been holding my votes until the very last day, and here are some titles I'm considering:
Whew! Someone finally nominated April Lurie's The Latent Powers of Dylan Fontaine today. So, that means I can nominate Meg Rosoff's odd but powerful What I Was in the Young Adult category.
Another category I follow carefully is poetry. I was happy to see that Imaginary Menagerie was nominated (and early!). I also really liked this year (and they're still not nominated!) J. Patrick Lewis's The World's Greatest: Poems and Pam Munoz Ryan's Our California. Hmmm...what to do? Someone help me out here, okay?
In 2008 there was only one Graphic Novel for me--Joann Sfar's Little Vampire--a book I loved and one I return to frequently. My heart remains true to the little vampire. Why? Because Little Vampire is a graphic novel children as young as six can read and one adults will enjoy as well. Little Vampire is about love and loyalty--to family, to friends, to monsters. My graphic novel nomination is a no-brainer.
The last category I am following carefully is the Middle Grade fiction category. I'm a judge this year (yay! I decided working with the publishers was not enough for me...), so I'm excited by which five-to-seven books will come my way in early 2009. My favorite book of the year (besides Little Vampire) was Frank Cottrell Boyce's Cosmic, but it has been nominated. So I think I'm going to nominate Judy Blume's Going, Going, Gone! with the Pain and
the Great One. I know this isn't an original or an out-of-the-box choice, but I love the Pain and the Great One books and they should be recognized--even if Judy Blume, the Queen of Children's Fiction, wrote them.
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Two other links of notice today:
1) My writing group friend Chris Marciniak has a book deal! Go, Chris! I am so proud of you and can't wait to see your book in print. (I've read Mike & Emma so many times, I am in love.)
2) Need a calming waste of time? Then don't miss This is Sand. Man, many minutes have gone by today creating sand art for me. Notice the passive? Wonderful.
