Cybils Shortlists and Other Listy Items

The 2010 Cybils nominees were announced today! In case you weren't aware, these are produced by a panel of Kidlitosphere bloggers who read something like a billion books and then try to balance that famous Newbery "distinguished" literary quality with the concept of strong kid appeal. One of my favorite things about the Cybils is that they include a graphic novel category. This is the 5th year for the Cybils and my first year as a judge. I'll be working on the shortlist for middle grade sci-fi/fantasy books to choose a single winner. Those titles are:

--The Magnificent 12: The Call by Michael Grant

--The Dead Boys by Royce Buckingham

--Dragonbreath: Attack of the Ninja Frogs by Ursula Vernon

--Fever Crumb by Philip Reeve

--Ninth Ward by Jewell Parker Rhodes

--Reckless by Cornelia Funke

--The Books of Elsewhere: The Shadows by Jacqueline West

In other list news, we have Betsy Bird's very fun Golden Fuse Awards for 2010 over at Fuse #8. And at the Heavy Medal Mock Newbery blog, Jonathan Hunt kindly corrals the books that have made some of those key "best of" lists into, well, a list! As in, which books have made more than one such list?

The buzzword for this year's award season is "wild card," which means, "Your guess is as good as mine." It also means that there are a lot of quirky books this time around, the best of them appealing in such different ways that the air is positively scented with apples and oranges.

But the standout title for a Newbery win so far is One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia. I would be very surprised if it didn't get at least an honor award, and I would not be at all surprised if it won the coveted crown this year.

P.S. I am absurdly pleased that my Cybils nominee for YA Fiction, Watt Key's Dirt Road Home, made the shortlist! (Here's my review.)

Also: My picks for the Newbery? I'll say One Crazy Summer for the win, then tell you that the Honor books I'd most like to see are A Conspiracy of Kings, The Night Fairy, and Dreamer.

Update on 1-5-10: One Crazy Summer has now won the 2011 Scott O'Dell Award for best children's historical fiction of the past year.

Best Children's Books of 2010

Travis of 100 Scope Notes has posted his list of the best 20 children's books of 2010, and a fine list it is, indeed! Of course, that got me thinking about my own best reads this past year. I'm not going to name 20, and you should know by now I have a fantasy bias, but that said, here are my top 10, approximately in order (lots of ties!). The only one I haven't reviewed yet is The Ring of Solomon (reviews linked below).

1. I Shall Wear Midnight by Terry Pratchett (YA)
2. A Conspiracy of Kings by Megan Whalen Turner (MG)
3. The Night Fairy by Laura Amy Schlitz, with illustrations by Angela Barrett (MG)
4. Bink and Gollie by Kate DiCamillo and Alison McGhee, with illustrations by Tony Fucile (Easy Reader)
5. The Ring of Solomon by Jonathan Stroud (MG)
6. Dash and Lily's Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan (YA)
7. Black Hole Sun by David Mcinnis Gill (YA)
8. The Boneshaker by Kate Milford (MG)
9. The Dreamer by Pam Muñoz Ryan, with illustrations by Peter Sis (MG)
10. The Crowfield Curse by Pat Walsh (MG)

Then there are the many terrific books I rather ruthlessly left off the list: Scumble by Ingrid Law, Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins, The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place by Maryrose Wood, Behemoth by Scott Westerfeld, Plain Kate by Erin Bow, and the graphic novel Hereville by Barry Deutsch, to name a few. I also devoured N.D. Wilson's entire 100 Cupboards trilogy with great relish this summer. Thanks, Mr. Wilson! And let's give a shout-out to poetry: I hope you've read Ubiquitous and Dark Emperor and Other Poems of the Night by Joyce Sidman, as well as Mirror Mirror by Marilyn Singer.

I suspect the only real dark horse on my list is The Crowfield Curse, a fine book I feel has been underappreciated, though it does pop up with an awards nomination here and there. I will note that I'd rather see an astonishing book that takes risks and has a couple of flaws than a book that plays it safe and makes fewer mistakes. This is one reason I liked Flora Segunda by Isabeau Wilce, for example. Still, though there aren't many perfect books out there (Charlotte's Web, maybe?), all ten of the books I've listed are very well written. Each has its own particular strengths and type of appeal, but I can tell you that the two I consider the most perfectly crafted—roundly, like circles—are The Night Fairy and Bink and Gollie. Richest character work? That would be I Shall Wear Midnight and A Conspiracy of Kings.

Dash and Lily wins the award for funniest, also for most off-the-wall riff on romance and relationships. I should add that Bink and Gollie is very funny in an understated, Winnie the Pooh or Frog and Toad way. The Boneshaker and Black Hole Sun are the most atmospheric, though in rather different ways. More solid characterization, to boot. And while The Boneshaker is more eerie, sci-fi thriller Black Hole Sun wins the award for most pulse-pounding. Dreamer gets my vote for most poignant and, yes, poetic, while The Ring of Solomon combines humor and adventure completely deliciously; I liked it even better than the author's previous trilogy. Finally, The Crowfield Curse is a subtle yet powerful new take on historical fantasy, with a wintry medieval abby setting that will not only chill you, but will leave you feeling like you'll never have another good meal in your life.

December is the time of year for such lists, of course. Here's a look at the Horn Book's best of 2010 as summarized on Read Roger, along with the Kirkus lists of best books for children and teens in 2010. And, in case you haven't been following along, here's a nice slice of the Heavy Medal Mock Newbery discussion; be sure to look at the comments, especially Jonathan Hunt's tally and notes about 3/4 of the way down. To sum up, One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia, A Conspiracy of Kings by Megan Whalen Turner, Joyce Sidman's poetry collection Dark Emperor, and a nonfiction book called Sugar Changed the World by Marc Aronson and Marina Budhos seem to be favorites among a number of readers and reviewers.

What are the best books for children and teens you've read this year?

Lemonade Question

If you're (a) bored, and (b) paying attention, you may be asking yourselves, "Why the sudden burst of bloggy productivity from Book Aunt?" The answer, my friends, is that I just finished writing a book, my new MG fantasy. Woo-hoo! It's called Lemonade Wings, hence the artwork. (No one's actually done a picture of wings made of lemonade, so we'll have to settle for just the lemonade.) Anyway, in about a week, I'll be knee-deep in another project, a rewrite of a book I'm converting from third person to first person, among other things, and will settle back to my ordinary blog routine. In the meantime, I have a question for YOU!

That is, like most avid readers, I find I can't buy or even track down every book I'm looking forward to. Or it's on the towering To Be Read pile. So here's a list of books I've been wanting to read, all of which came out this year, most in the past 4-5 months.

My question is, which ones are the best? I figure some of you will have read at least part of my list and can let me know! (Also, feel free to mention books not on the list, as long as they're from 2010. Preferably books I haven't reviewed here on the blog.)

Agent Q: Pals in Peril—M.T. Anderson
Ancient, Strange, and Lovely—Susan Fletcher
Cloaked in Red—Vivian Vande Velde (Red Riding Hood stories)
The Clockwork Three—Matthew J. Kirby
The Clockwork Angel—Cassandra Clare
Diamonds and Toads—Heather Tomlinson
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Truth—Jeff Kinney
Faery Rebels: Wayfarer—R.J. Anderson
The Genius Wars—Catherine Jinks
The Ghostwriter Secret—Mac Barnett
The Goblin Gate—Hilari Bell
Grounded—Kate Klise
Guyku: A Year of Haiku for Boys—Bob Raczka
Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword—Barry Deutsch (graphic novel)
Keeper—Kathy Appelt
Linger—Maggie Stiefvater
The Lost Conspiracy—Frances Hardinge
The Mockingbirds—Daisy Whitney
Pegasus—Robin McKinley
Penny Dreadful—Laurel Snyder
Reckless—Cornelia Funke
The Search for Wondla—Tony DiTerlizzi
Sophie Simon Solves Them All—Lisa Graff
The Steps Across the Water—Adam Gopnik
The Suburb Beyond the Stars—M.T. Anderson
The Unsinkable Walker Bean—Aaron Renier (graphic novel)
The Web of Titan and The Cassini Code —Dom Testa
When Rose Wakes—Christopher Golden
You Wish—Mandy Hubbard

Book Stars of 2010

Blogger Elizabeth Bluemle of ShelfTalker (at Publishers Weekly) kindly rounds up the books that have gotten starred reviews in major review sources; I posted about this list 4-5 months ago, but here's her updated version of "The Stars So Far." (Thanks to Betsy Bird of Fuse #8 for the link!) Note that Bluemle provides a list of 6-star books, then 5-star books, 4-star books, etc.

And the 6-star books are...

--A Conspiracy of Kings by Megan Whalen Turner
--Cosmic by Frank Cottrell Boyce
--Dreamer by Pam Muñoz Ryan
--The War to End All Wars by Russell Freedman

As Bluemle herself explains, "Starred reviews are excellent guideposts, but they don’t tell the whole story, of course. There are amazing books out there that never receive a starred review but are popular and/or critical favorites nonetheless." It's interesting to compare these starred lists to the books that are getting much of the Newbery chatter (see September 18th post below about that). The twain don't always meet. But between the two groups, you can certainly come up with some terrific books, and that's the real point of all this.