Cyblis Awards

So last week I discussed the ALA Awards and what they are, how they are organized, and the criteria for the awards. I'm going to touch on this same subject again, this time with a much smaller but still very interesting award for bloggers, the Cyblis Awards.

The Cybils awards are given out every year by children and young adult bloggers for "the year's best children and young adult awards". The award is structured into two rounds and is run completely by bloggers.

The award has been given out annually since 2006 and is run by Anne Levy, the administrator of the awards.

The purpose of the award, according to the official website is, this: "to reward the children's and young adult authors (and illustrators, let's not forget them) whose books contain the highest literary merits and "kid appeal" and to "foster a sense of community among bloggers who write about children's and young adult literature, highlight our best reviewers (and shamelessly promote their blogs) and provide a forum for the similarly obssessed". So essentially this: to reward authors for their books and to foster a community of bloggers. 

The award is a bit different from the ALA Awards and is open to more categories; in that "children's and young adult" guideline there are many categories. 

The categories are the following:

• Book Apps (this is a new category introduced in 2011)
• Fiction Picture Books
• Nonfiction Picture Books
• Easy Readers
• Early Chapter Books
• Poetry
• Graphic Novels
• Fantasy and Science Fiction
• Middle Grade Fiction
• Young Adult Nonfiction
• Young Adult Graphic Novels
• Young Adult Fantasy and Science Fiction
• Young Adult Fiction

You can view a list of the 2011 winners in all these categories here.

Now, as you can see, the award is very vast and has many different categories. The categories are all judged by two groups in two rounds: the round 1 panelists and the judges (the ones who get to decide the winners).

Anyone who contributes regularly to a blog about children's and young adult literature can participate ( they must be at least 16 and if they are under 18 their parents must sign a waiver). Regularly, according to the site, means that you contribute to the blog "pretty much  at least once a month or so, though there are always exceptions". To sign up, you fill out a form every year. Not everyone is chosen, however, and the judges are combed from the many people who enter. The judges are broken into two groups, the 1st round panelists and the final judges. There are 1st round panelists and final judges for each category. 

The criteria for judges is thus follows:

• a demonstrated expertise in the genre
• a demonstrated enthusiasm for blogging
• a blog that has built a following (not necessarily a huge following -- loyalty counts)
• the blogger's prestige

People can nominate books for the Cybils starting October 1st. After October 15th the first round judges begin their work. Their role is to "sift through scores of nominated books in your genre". They work for about a month, reading frantically and working hard, and then turn in a shortlist of 5-7 titles in the middle of December. 

Judges start at the beginning of January and announce the winners by February 12, reading all the titles on the shortlist and determining the final winner. 

And of course, it is a LOT of work.

If you want to read actual posts on the work in the Cybils, here are some posts from STACKED (a blog that has participated in the award for the last three years on different topics pertaining to the award): post cybils life, from the trenches, why the awards matter, and life on the panel.

If you're interested in learning more about the Cybils, such as how to nominate titles, see past winners,  or nominate yourself to be a judge (good luck!) visit the Cybils website. 

YALSA Awards

Most people have probably heard of the Newbery and Caldecott. These awards are given out each year in the middle of January (honoring the previous' years books) and celebrate the "most distinguished contribution to American literature for children". You can find more information about the Newbery here and more about the Caldecott here.

However, besides these two awards -- which may be the most well known -- there are plenty more distributed each year. The annual awards ceremony -- where all of the ALA awards are given -- lasts almost two hours.

Let's back up a second. ALA  or the American Library Association is a large organization that helps librarians and libraries, and the organization is the one that distributes the awards such as the Newbery and Caldecott. It's a very big group that many (I wouldn't say all, but it's a large number) of librarians are a part of. ALA is the main organization, but through the organization there are a great number of groups that specifically deal with a certain topic.

Now, back to the awards. There are many great awards that they give out each year. Awards for audiobooks and nonfiction and children's books and YA and distinguished authors and debut awards, every award you could possibly think of that somehow relates to books and literature.

Today I'm specifically going to talk about the YA awards. These awards are distributed by one of the groups of ALA, YALSA. YALSA stands for the Young Adult Library Services Association. You can view their website here.

YALSA distributes all of the YA-related awards. Most--not all--of the awards have one honor and three honor books (sort of like 2nd and 3rd place: you are still a winner and still acknowledged though you aren't 1st).  Some awards however, do not follow this scheme and instead honor 10 awards or more awards than the "average joe" award.  The awards are selected by committes. All members of the committees must be ALA/YALSA members and librarians. YALSA says that their awards are to honor the best literature for teens.  For each award I'm going to explain what each award is, exactly. For each award there will be a picture of the actual award given and a link to the award's site if you're interested in learning more. All statements in quotation marks are direct quotes from the YALSA site. The websites are a great resource and explain more about the award, such as when it was founded and it's criteria, as well as including lists of past winners of the award and winner's speeches.

Let's get started.

Alex Awards: The Alex awards are given to 10 books for adults that "have special appeal to teens ages 12-18".  These books can be of any genre, as long as the books were published in the previous year (example: 2011 books were honored in 2012). The award has been given annually since 1998. The award was originally given by a special project, the YALSA Adult Books for Young Adults that Margaret Alexander Edwards had sponsored. The award is named after Alexander Edwards, who was a "pioneer in young adult library services". She was called Alex by her friends, hence the award's title. YALSA says that the purpose of this award is to provide a list for young adult librarians to share with their teens and increase their teens' outlook on adult titles. The award is now sponsored by the Margaret A. Edwards Trust.

Margaret A. Edwards Awards: The Margaret A. Edwards Award honors "an author, as well as a specific body of his or her work, for significant and lasting contributions to young adult literature". This award, instead of simply focusing on one of the author's titles, honors their entire body of work and all of the achievements that they have done over the course of their career. This award is again named after Margaret A. Edwards, whom the Alex awards are also named for. The Edwards awards have been established since 1988. The purpose of this award is to "honor an author's work in helping adolescents become aware of themselves and addressing questions about their role and importance in relationships, society, and the world". Many of the authors honored with this award are very famous, or at least very well known -- just a scan down the list proves that. What do S. E Hinton, Judy Blume, and Madeline L'Engle have in common? They all won Edwards Awards. This award is sponsored by School Library Journal. 

William C. Morris YA Debut Awards: This award honors "a debut book published by a first-time author writing for teens". This award focuses only on debut books. Debut books are books written by authors who have never published a book before; their debut title is their first book. This award is one of the more recent awards (the Alex, Printz, Morris, Nonfiction, and Odyssey awards are the five  most recent) -- it was formed in 2009. The award is named for William "Bill" C. Morris, an "influential innovator" and who left an "impressive mark on the field of children and young adult literature". The books in the award are based on: compelling, high quality writing; the integrity of the work as a whole; and it's proven or potential appeal to a wide range of readers. This award is the only one to have "potential or proven appeal" (ie, teens will be interested in reading the book) in its guidelines, and the award criteria is a bit more open, though the award is limited to debut titles.

Nonfiction Awards: This is the only YALSA award that focuses specifically on nonfiction. While some of the other awards may have nonfiction titles (and this is specifically mentioned in most award criteria) this award was specifically designated to honor "the best nonfiction book published for young adults ages 12-18". This award also gives a specific amount of time for the books published: November 1- October 31 of each year. (This is different than most of the other titles, which only require that they be published in the preceding year.) The award's purpose is to recognize the best in the field of nonfiction for teens and help give recognition to the genre. Interestingly enough, the award also states that it's purpose is to show YALSA as a strong leader in nonfiction. Hmm. This award is very recent, having started in 2010.

Odyssey Awards: Like the Nonfiction award, this award specifically focuses in on a genre: audiobooks. The awards honor "the producer (not the author or the person who reads the audiobook) of the best audiobook for children and/or young adults, published in English in the United States". This award is different because it opens the playing field to children's audiobooks as well. It also removes any audiobook not read in English (for example, an audiobook read in Spanish) from the award. The award is based on the following criteria: literary merit and the quality of the audiobook (narration, sound quality, background etc). This award has existed since 2008.




Okay, I have one more award to talk about. The Printz Award. The Printz is a bit like the Newbery award mentioned at the beginning of the post -- the Newbery for young adult literature. Both the Newbery and Printz awards both have very similar goals. This award is the one that is probably the most well known out of all of the awards, and one of the most recent.

Printz Awards: This award honors a book that "exemplifies literary excellence in young adult literature". The criteria for the award is literary merits such as story, voice, style, setting, theme, accuracy, characters, illustrations and design (how the book is organized). This award is probably the YALSA award that is grounded the most in literary merits and quality. The purpose of this award is to bring quality literature to young adults and showcase the best fiction for young adults. The Printz Award is named for Michael L. Printz, a school librarian who was very active in YALSA and a longtime member of the organization. The award has existed since 2000 and is now considered the most well-known YALSA award. Anyone can nominate a title for this award.


These may be YALSA's most well known awards, and they are the ones cited as awards on YALSA's awards page but they are not the only awards and booklists that YALSA creates. There are many more smaller awards and many booklists, such as Amazing Audiobooks for Young Adults, Best Fiction for Young Adults (BFYA), Fabulous Films for Young Adults, Great Graphic Novels for Teens, and many more.

If you have any questions on these awards, comment below. If you are interested in searching and learning more about the awards you can view more information in the links for each award (click on the bold font titles  of each award) or you can view them on the awards page.

Hope that you learned something about YALSA awards :)

Awards and Generalizations

We've been talking about awards a lot lately -- at least I think we have -- and so I thought I would talk about how people describe award winners.

Usually people say one of three  things:

1. IT'S REALLY GOOD

2. IT MADE ME CRY

3. IT SUCKED

Occasionally they say two of them, but most of the time it is one of them with either a bright grin or a grumpy face. But most of the time, it seems that they say one or the other. So I tried to do research for this topic, and found well, no articles that say that people express the same feelings as me.

So instead, it is story time.

In sixth grade, we read quite a few Newbery books and Newbery Honor books. Our teacher seemed to like them for some reason, so we read them. On Newbery books, the seal is imprinted onto the cover. You can run your hand against the seal and feel the bumps, as well as the imprint on the back of the front cover. And of course, the main purpose is to tell you, Hey! You're reading a Newbery Book!

I sat with one boy all year. For privacy purposes, we'll just call him P. P was awfully smart, and a really nice kid. He loved to read, and our teachers would always get mad at him for reading during class. We would do novel units, and so I expected P to get excited.

But this happened instead:

When we read A Single Shard by Linda Sue Park:

P looked right at me and said, "There's a medal on the cover." (He also occasionally was very obvious.)
I rolled my eyes and said, "Yeah, there is."
P nodded and said, "That means someone's going to die and it's going to suck."
"No way," I said. "Newbery books are always really good."
"Nope," P said, "someone always dies."

I thought it was weird, since I've always liked Newbery books and have quite a few of them. I've never really cried at one of the books, but they're always very interesting and usually very good books. The the conversation disappeared from my mind until a few months later.

This time we were reading my personal favorite book of the year, Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli:

I grabbed my copy of the book and said, "This should be good."
P nodded, and I was surprised.
"I thought you hated the books in LA," I said.
P nodded again. "Yeah, but this one doesn't have a sticker on it."
"So?"
"So it won't suck and nobody dies."

So that made me wonder. I moved away at the end of sixth grade, and I asked P just before I left if he liked Stargirl (we had just about finished the book when I moved). He paused and told me, slightly confused, that it didn't suck. I asked him why and he told me it was because nobody died.

And that got me wondering. (The following section is a spoiler for all of these books,  so don't read the descriptions if you prefer not to
but I think the message doesn't work otherwise.)

In A Single Shard, Crane-man dies.

In Moon Over ManifestJ inx nearly dies (I count this because the reader believes that he has died for a substantial amount of time)

In When You Reach Me, the laughing man dies 

But through my small amount of research, I discovered that this rule can apply to other award-winning books as well. For the YA angle, I went with the Printz Award (which I discussed recently).

In How I Live Now, Aunt Penn dies, along with a hoard of animals

In Looking for Alaska, Alaska dies and death becomes the central scene of the novel

Death is also important in Jellicoe Road, which has the biggest wammy of deaths I found: Fitz, Tate, Webb, and Jonah's father, all sadly pass away. Jessa and Chloe P. also almost die as well.

So what does that show? I don't know if it really proves P's point, but the truth is there are a lot of deaths in Newbery and other award-winning novels. Sometimes the death even becomes the central point of the novel.

And the truth is, people say "Newbery winners will make you cry". It's a broad generalization that most people know, and when the award winners are announced in January people always comment that the books seem depressing. But the truth is, a lot of books now focus on "depressing" themes, whether it's death or tragedy or a broken family or relationship.

So really, I'm just going back to the original point I made a few days ago: books win awards because the people who read them love them. And the truth is, a LOT of them involve deaths. But that's just how it goes.

It's really just a broad generalization, and most of the kids in my sixth grade LA class hated reading novels because of that. Our teacher was always a bit confused, since she'd always praise the books and say that we would adore them and the rest of us would roll our eyes (admittedly, myself included).

So there are a lot of generalizations for awards. And I think really that is what this post turned into: people believe in the generlizations for award-winning books, like this book will suck or someone will die or it will be amazing. Because that's what they've heard, based on experience, even if they have never bothered to read the books.

So everyone has different opinions, and we all have different generlizations about books, both good and bad.

To end the post, I'll give you something P told me when we read Stargirl:

"What do you think the literary definition of 'stargirls'  should be? I think it should be NOBODY CARES GIVE UP TEACHERS."



Printz Award

(Note: Most of the information in this post  comes from the Michael L. Printz website)

(Seal copyright American Library Association.)

That right there is the award seal for the Michael L. Printz Award -- it's the same seal you see printed on the award-winning books. The Printz Award is an award given out annually for the best literature for young adults by the American Library Association (ALA). The award has been distributed since 2000 in honor of a Topeka, Kansas library member who was a long-time member of the Young Adult Library Service Association (YALSA) run by ALA.

That's a lot of acronyms, but the Printz Award is regarded as the Pultizer of YA.

Recently, I've read three of the books winning the Printz:

Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta (won in 2009)

Looking for Alaska by John Green (won in 2006)

and

How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff (won in 2005)

When I first started reading the books (Looking for Alaska was the first), I decided to go and check out more on the Printz website. The website has a lot of great information -- book lists, acceptance speeches, reports from the chairs--and then I had a question.

What makes books award worthy? What makes them "better" then the rest of the books?

I found a quote from the Printz Award chair this year, Erin Downey Howertown, speaking on this year's winner, Ship Breaker:

"This taut, suspensful novel is a relentless adventure story featuring nuanced characters in thought-provoking conflicts. [Paolo] Bacigalupi artfully intertwines themes of loyalty, family, frendship, truth, and love."

So, basically, apparently the book is suspensful, a good adventure story, with good characters and conflict. There are themes of loyalty, family, friendship, truth and love.

So what?

There are plenty of books that are suspensful and adventerous with good characters and plotting, and stories that have loyalty, family, friendship, truth and love as their main themes.

So what made the Printz Award committee choose Ship Breaker over all the rest of the books in YA published this year? What made them choose it over the other novels picked as Printz Honor books?

Here are the Printz Honor books for 20ll, with descriptions from the Printz website:

Stolen by Lucy Christopher

"The rugged Australian outback becomes Gemma's prison after she is drugged and abducted by a handsome, obessive stranger in a first novel filled with searing imagery and archetypal characters".

Please Ignore Vera Dietz by A.S King

"Vera Dietz wants to be ignored, but the ghost of her ex-best friend won't leave her alone in this dark comedy that examines relationships, identity, grief, and flowcharts."

Revolver by Marcus Sedgewick

"In Sedgwick's grim, chilling story set in the Arctic Circle, Sig finds his father's frozen corpse as human predator Wolff arrives seeking retribution and a hidden Gold Rush treasure".

Nothing by Janne Teller

"Pierre Anthon's nihilsm causes his classmates to begin a search for life's meaning in this bold, unsettling parable translated from Danish".


All of the books are wonderful -- I have read a few of them -- but it made me wonder. All of the books have gotten impressive reviews (many starred reviews from publications like Publishers Weekly and School Library Journal), become bestsellers, and catapulted the authors into YA fame.

And they all have what the chair mentioned -- suspensful adventure stories, filled with wonderful characters and themes of love, loyalty, family, friendship, and truth, not to mention that they're all written well.

So what makes the book triumph? Obviously the Printz award committee has a difficult job, paging through the thousands or hundreds of YA novels presented to them. And every year they choose wonderful books, many becoming cult classics or bestsellers.

But I think that there's one reason, one reason that sets the books above over every other book they read and seperates the line between Winner and Honor.

It's simple, and a bit obvious, but there is one reason that books are published. One reason that the commitee chooses them to win the Printz or the Newbery.

The people who see them love them.

They love the books with all their heart: the characters, the plot, the setting. They're invested in the story and never let go, engrossed in the writing and story. They gush about it to everyone they know and admire the author more.

They adore the story with all their heart, and just know that it deserves to be a winner.

Ever seen a video of editors discussing their books? The editors are always happy -- they're proud, their excited that the story is out into the world. Editors would never intentionally publish a bad book; they publish books that they're proud of, books that they know will suceed, books that they love.

Watch the Printz speeches -- search up "Printz Award Speeches" on YouTube. The chairs who announce the authors are always excited, proud. They choose the books that they love, the books that they know that teens will like.

There is a reason that everyone adores those Printz books. The reviewers don't just give them out to everyone: they choose the books that they love, the books that they know that teens will love, every one of them.

And that, folks, is why books are published, why books win awards.