I have always wondered how one gets chosen to judge book awards and which books are chosen for different book awards. From the time I was a child, I would see the shiny award circles on books or the list of the author’s acolades when learning about a book and I would ask myself, what made this book so special and who was it that decided this? While I am far from a Newberry judge, I did have the exciting opportunity this last year to join a panel of judges to decide the finalists for books in the Middle Grade Speculative Fiction category of the Cybils Awards.
What are the Cybils?
Children’s and Young Adult Book Lovers’ Literary Awards
The Cybils Awards started out with a group of bloggers in 2005 who wanted to recognize books that portray diversity, inclusion, and appropriate representation for kids and teens. The ‘b’ in Cybils originally stood for bloggers. But we all know that the internet is ever changing and since 2005 we saw an explosion of popularity with social media. While there are still many popular blogs out there, the greater number of book reviewers online do not have blogs. They are just people with a social media account reading books and sharing their love for these books with their followers. Thus the ‘b’ changed from bloggers to book lovers. Consider the Cybils awards as something given by your friends. Those people that you trust to give you great book recommendations for your kids also get together and discuss the best books published in the last year to give out this award to outstanding books that we think you and your kids are absolutely going to love!
Who gets to nominate books for Cybils?
You do! Everyone and anyone can nominate a book. And Cybils has categories for every age and interest! Each individual who gets on to nominate can choose one book for each category to nominate. I’ve seen nominations from other book reviewers, like myself (yes, I nominated my favorite books). I’ve seen authors nominate books that they love. And most importantly, the average person, teacher, librarian, reader of any sort, can go to Cybils and nominate the books that they love! Sometime around the middle of September nominations open. This nomination period is only open for a couple of weeks so you’ll want to be sure to get on during that period. After general nominations close, there is a period where authors and publishers can also submit their own works for consideration if another reader did not do so during the general nominations. The criteria for which books can be nominated are pretty simple. It must be a book written in English (bilingual included), written in the last year (this is from Oct 16 of the previous year to Oct 15 of the current year), published in the U.S. or Canada, and be widely available. Independently published books can be submitted; they just need to meet the criteria. If you have more than 1 book that you loved then you can get your friends and family to nominate those books that you want to be sure to see included. The Cybils want to see anyone who loves books have the opportunity to see those favorite books submitted for consideration.
How are judges chosen?
Each category has 7 or 9 judges. It must always be an odd number to avoid ties when choosing finalists. These judges are your trusted book reviewers on social media, your online friends. People whose faces you have likely seen online sharing a love of children’s books. So when you wonder, well who gets to choose from the hundreds of books published each year those that are the cream of the crop to receive the award, you now have an answer for at least one of these awards. You can go and look up these judges, click on their social media accounts, and hear from them on a regular basis. There is sometimes some turnover in judges so each year the Cybils chairs put out a call for judges. There are two rounds of judges. Round 1 reads as many books as possible from their category to determine approximately seven finalists. Round 2 judges read those seven books and get to work together to judge the winners of the awards. Judges are expected to post regularly, at least twice a month, on their own social about children’s books. Chairs look for judges that not only share summaries about books, but also their postive and negative thoughts about these books. So if you love children’s literature and have a platform where you share about this love for kidslit, then you could apply to be a judge. If you don’t yet have a social media account where you do this, start one today. It really isn’t hard. Pick one platfrom to focus on at first, whether it be Instagram or YouTube or something else, then start posting about the books you love most and why. If you hope to be a judge I encourage you to reach out before the summer so that you can be involved in the summer discussions of books that may be nominated.
What criteria do judges use to determine if books become finalists?
High literary merit and kid appeal. One of the founders refers to books they like to see on Cybils as, “organic chicken nuggets, good for you but still tasty.” So while some book awards are only focused on the literary merit, those very important brussel sprouts with the critical healthy ingredients that all books should have to be considered, and other book awards just want to see kids loving the flavor of the gummy bears, Cybils awards books that are both delicious to consume yet also include those important nutrients for good growth and health. Cybils strives to spotlight books for marginalized/underserved communities. They seek positive representation in books for kids and teens. While they are always looking for diverse books, they aren’t just looking for something that meets a checkbox character who is just there as a side character for a bit of representation. I love how Verna Myers put it, “diversity is being invited to the party. Inclusion is being asked to dance.” Cybils is very open with what they use to determine which books get chosen. You can view their criteria online, including their lists of goals and guidelines for inclusitivity.
It is not just a popularity contest.
My experience as a judge.
I saw a call for judges on a Facebook group that I’m in. I was immediately excited about it. Me? The average person? I could be a judge? I don’t have some vast social media following, I wondered if I would be selected. But the application was not extensive so I filled it out and before too long I heard back. Sure enough, it was that easy. I initially requested to be on the panel judging realistic fiction for middle grade. Judges have the option to connect throughout the summer to discuss books that they think may show up as nominations. We would also discuss any other books that we were reading. It was during this time that my panel chair noticed that I also read a lot of middle grade speculative fiction and asked if I would be willing to switch to judging that category as they had a need for more judges there. Now, fantasy is my jam, but I had requested realistic fiction because not only do I enjoy reading it and was trying to read more outside my favorite genre. I also wondered if I might be too biased in judging books in my preferred category. But as mentioned before Cybils has extensive guidelines for how they judge books so I was able to take confidence that I would be able to judge each book fairly. I switched categories and studied up and learned more about how Cybils worked by reading all of their material and talking with other judges, including interviewing the upcoming Cybils chair on my podcast.
Cybils has a wonderful site exclusively for the judges where we can view the nominated books (anyone can also view nominated books as they are nominated on the Cybils main website as well), keep track of our readings, link our own reviews for those books, and create a shortlist of our preferred books to become finalists. Initially we try to read as many books as possible from the list of nominations in our category, including reviewing any nominated that we had read earlier in the year. Let me tell you that was a LOT of reading! Of course I read tons of middle grade books throughout the year because I have my YouTube channel where I recommend books for adults to share with the kids in their lives. I generally try to read at least five advance reader copies of books in different middle grade genres. And I’m also always reading books to prepare for podcast interviews with children’s book authors and other themed videos I create. But! This was a whole new level of reading! 102 books were nominated for consideration in the speculative fiction category for middle grade. 102 books to read in just 3 short months! While I wasn’t able to read all 102 books, I did read a lot of them.
Cybils requires that each nominted book be read by at least 2 judges. Many are read by 4-7 judges. As judges we were constantly adding and removing books from our own working shortlists. As November drew to a close our panel chair requested we begin shortening our shortlist to only 7 books. This was difficult and some of us may have included 10 books on our shorlist. Shhh. Throughout the process we were constanly discussing which books we were reading and why we were or were not including them on our shortlist. In December it was time for all seven of us judges to meet over Zoom and finalize which books would be the official seven finalists in our category. There was one book that was immediatly on this list. While I won’t share which book this was, I will share that it was easy to put on the list because it was the only book that every judge shortlisted and were absolutely sure we wanted to include. Then the hard work began. Which other six books would we include? There was extensive conversation about each book from each of our shortlists. We debated reasons each book merited a spot as a finalist and, truly, so many more than six books could have been given that honor. But in this situation we were only able to pass seven finalists to the next round of judges. Once we determined our seven books each of us seven judges wrote a blurb for one of these books. You can view these Cybils reviewer created blurbs of the finalitsts yourself on the Cybils site. I loved my involvement with Cybils and look forward to participating again. I encourage every reader of children’s books to watch for the call for nominations to come out this September so that you can be a part of choosing the best books in children’s literature.
What books were winners this year?
Board Books – Who Laid These Eggs?: A Lift-the-Flap Book (An Animal Traces Book)
by Gehl, Laura, illustrated by Lora, Loris
Published: Harry N Abrams
Fiction Picture Books – I am a Masterpiece!
by Mia Armstrong; Illustrated by Alexandra Thompson
Publisher: Random House Books for Young Readers
Elementary Non-Fiction – My Antarctica: True Adventures in the Land of Mummified Seals, Space Robots, and So Much More
by G. Neri, illustrated by Corban Wilkin
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Elementary/Middle Grade Fiction – A Royal Conundrum (The Misfits)
by Lisa Yee, illustrated by Dan Santat
Publisher: Random House Books for Young Readers
Elementary/Middle Grade Graphic Novel – Pearl: A Graphic Novel
by Sherri L. Smith, illustrated by Christine Norrie
Publisher: GRAPHIX
Elementary/Middle Grade Speculative Fiction – Impossible Creatures
by Katherine Rundell, illustrated by Ashley Mackenzie
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers
Middle Grade Non-Fiction – Why We Need Vaccines: How Humans Beat Infectious Diseases
by: Rowena Rae and Paige Stampatori
Publisher: Orca Books
High School Non-Fiction – American Wings: Chicago’s Pioneering Black Aviators and the Race for Equality in the Sky
by: Smith, Sherri L. and Wein, Elizabeth
Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers
Poetry Collections – Black Girl You Are Atlas
by: Renée Watson, illustrated by Ekua Holmes
Publisher: Kokila
Poetry Novel in Verse – Kareem Between
by: Shifa Saltagi Safadi
Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers
Young Adult Fiction – Everything We Never Had
by: Randy Ribay
Publisher: Kokila
Young Adult Graphic Novel – Brownstone
by: Samuel Teer, illustrated by Mar Julia
Publisher: Versify
Young Adult Speculative Fiction – Hearts Still Beating
by: Brooke Archer
Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers
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