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 :)

Popularity

Ahh, popularity.

The mean girls from Mean Girls being...mean.

You know, "she's more popular than I am" or "I wanna be popular" or "I'm so unpopular", etc. There have been plenty of movies on the subject. Mean Girls is maybe the most popular. We've all had issues with popularity, and I'd be surprised if you haven't. I want to be more popular, I don't like being popular, I'm such a nerd, why can't I be popular, the popular girls suck and I want to destroy them, to name several examples.

This situation has popped up in many, many contemporary books. It happens to plenty of people, whether you're concerned about your popularity or bullied or harmed by other, more popular people. And the situations, of course, also are often found in media.

But the problem of popularity also crosses over into the blogging world, sadly.

Note: not all bloggers are kids in green shirts.

Not all blogs are popular. There are extremely popular blogs and then moderately popular blogs and then small blogs and then blogs that are barely noticed.

However, sometimes, sadly, being popular gets you more stuff. More ARCs and more chances to be on a blog tour. More chances to interview big authors or get swag, more chances to host giveaways. The more stats you have, the more followers, the more people interested in reading your blog the better chance publishers will notice. (Kelly's post on stats here is a good explanation of stats & what they really mean.) And so people want to be popular, because they want....stuff.

And free stuff is nice. I like free stuff. I'm not judging people who want to gain more free stuff.

But it makes me sad when people just want to be popular. Now, this next part will probably sound like I'm an annoying mother, and I am sorry OH SO VERY SORRY, but there really is no other way to say it:

BEING POPULAR IS NOT EVERYTHING.

Now, I'm probably reminding you of your mom, or a counselor or guidance worker. You've heard this before. C'mon.

Picture me as this lady, minus the math problems (ick).

But it makes me sad that we still have to point this out, prove that being popular is not everything. Midlist blogs can still get free stuff. I get emails asking if I can review books. I get ARCs. I've been offered to do blog tours before.

Being popular is not everything. You can still receive stuff, get fans, get comments, get anything your heart desires.

So I'd like to thank all the blogs I continually read, the ones that pipe into my reader. They aren't all popular, have thousands of fans, host plenty of giveaways and have mailboxes stuffed with books. But they're good blogs with quality resources and reviews. And that's really all I want to get out of a blog.

So I'd like to thank all the blogs I read. And remember (hear goes the teacher thing again): your blog does matter.

No matter how popular it is. And popularity isn't everything.

So thank you, bloggers, no matter how popular you are.

Why Libraries and Librarians Matter

Why Librarians and Libraries Matter

 I want to be a librarian.

I've wanted to be a librarian for a very long time. I've done research on what education you need to be a librarian, read magazines geared towards librarian readers, and I've nibbled up every snap of information I can get on librarianship. Of course, I know that simply doing research isn't enough. I've prepared myself for volunteer work at the library in the future, connected with librarians and just tried to understand the job and its community.

But the truth is, it's not really a common thing for teens and kids to want to be. Most of my classmates want to be sports players, vets, rich people, etc. A teacher in fifth grade asked my class what we wanted to be when we grew up. We had to write a short paragraph and draw a picture of ourselves as an adult in the job position we chose.

Again, my classmates said they wanted to be sports players, presidents, judges, lawyers, writers (the girl who said that is my friend, of course) and all kinds of normal, typical things that made sense for a bunch of ten-and-eleven year olds.

I stood up and said, "I want to be a librarian." Most of the kids stared at me like I was an idiot. A couple said things like, "Why would you want to be one?" My teacher shushed them but I could tell she was surprised too.

And the same kind of attitude -- thinking libraries and librarians are stupid and old-fashioned -- seems to have carried on into adults.

That is not to say that every adult hates libraries or librarians, or thinks that they're stupid and/or old fashioned. But there are some that do, and there seems to be an image in popular culture of librarians. These librarians are old people, usually ladies, with thick glasses and sweaters who constantly tell you to be quiet.

But that is not how librarians are.

This should seem to be an obvious statement. Obviously this image is a stereotype, etc etc. But the image continues.

I'll counter this stereotype by telling you about librarians I know. I have known three librarians who shaped my life. Lori, Carol, and Amy. Lori was my elementary school librarian and the first ever librarian I really knew. She was very funny and kind, and an amazing book talker. Carol was the kids/teen librarian at the public library by my house. She led a mother-daughter book club that my mother and I participated in for almost four years until I grew out of the program. She was a smart lady who was fantastic at leading book discussions and picked great books. Amy is the assistant librarian with a focus on teens at the library I now patronage. She's a very funny lady with a great mind for what teens like.

And these librarians -- three amazing ladies -- are just three of many, thousands and thousands, of librarians around the world. Librarians are diverse; they're male and female, young and old, with every race represented.

But is the job easy? Of course not, no job is completely easy. Librarians deal with bad patrons and computer problems and plenty of other issues. There's the issue of e-books and technology and the fact that libraries might become obsolete someday. The issue that popular culture doesn't think highly of librarians and they are stereotyped. There are problems with budgets and not being able to buy enough books and the issue of books being stolen and the fact that funding for libraries is low.

But despite problems, libraries really can impact people. They help kids learn to read, impacting the babies and toddlers directly by storytime, and helping the parents with programs on literacy. They give older kids fun programs – gross out ones and fun ones and book related ones, work their butts off in the summertime for summer reading. They help kids find books to read, whether the books be for pleasure or a project, and make sure to give them good stories to enjoy.

Frankly, I love librarians.

I could go on forever about why I like them and why I care. But at the same time, these descriptions of what librarians do are empty in a kind of way. So I’ll tell you a true story. It may be a bit movie-like, and perhaps dramatic, but I think it tells a librarian story very well.

This story involves Lori, the first librarian I talked about. You’ll remember that she was the librarian at my public elementary school and was a fantastic book talker and storyteller.

Also, note—“we” and “us” mentions are describing my elementary school classes as a whole.

In elementary school, every time we visited the library as a class we would sit on a big round circle rug first. Lori would sit in a chair across from us and read us a book,  and when we got a little older, she would talk to us about other topics, such as online safety and plagiarizing.

When we were younger, we’d sit and beg her to read more and more. We liked reading, yes, but we liked listening to her more.

Lori was a clever lady. She knew we’d listen to her, so she carefully book talked books as soon as she finished reading. We paid attention, captivated, and guess what? Those books always got checked out. And guess what? They were great books.

As we got older, we started to read more. We read more thanks to what: her awesome book talks. She gave us a love of reading slowly. And you know what? By the time we were in fifth grade we didn’t want to listen to a story. We wanted to get up and check out a book or two (or three, thanks to our school libraries’ lovely policy of allowing older kids to check out up to three titles).

And what I love the most about this story is not how amazing our librarian was. It’s how this affected so many people – twenty six kids, and guess what, every single one of them read.

And this was just the classes I participated in; think of the other three or four classes, all of which went to the library and also gained a “thirst for books”.

Librarians can make an impact. And they do make an impact.

Personally, I think they’re underappreciated.

And I’ve known many, many great librarians both online and in real life.

And I’m proud to say that someday, yes, I want to be a librarian.