Awards season

Today the Newbery, Caldecott, Printz and other awards were announced by the American Library Association.  Here’s the official press release, if you’d like to peruse it.  Personally, I consider this a to-do list.  I like to have read what books are all the buzz before the awards are announced, but that didn’t happen this year.  Let’s be honest, that’s happened once.  But I aspire to be the kind of person who does that.  Someday.

Another award I’m excited about is the Cybils.  It’s a literary award that is done by book bloggers.  Here’s an excerpt from the 2009 list of award winners that I think sums it up perfectly:

The Cybils are a series of book awards given by children’s and young adult book bloggers. The Cybils have only two criteria: literary merit and kid appeal. We don’t think those two values have to collide.  There are books we want kids to read and books kids can’t resist. Somewhere in the middle, they meet.   Now in our fourth year, we’re comprised of 100+ bloggers who write about children’s and teen’s books every day. We open our nominations to the public.   Maybe there’s a book your child devoured under the covers with a flashlight.  Another may have circulated from locker to locker.  And still another never seemed to make it back to the library by its due date.  You compile the list. We take it from there.

The genres nominated are easy readers/short chapter books, fantasy and science fiction, fiction picture books, graphic novels, middle grade fiction, non-fiction picture books, non-fiction: middle grade and young adult, poetry, and young adult fiction.  They cover a lot more than the more well-known awards so that excellent books in different styles or genres get some recognition.  Thousands of books are nominated for this award, thanks to opening it to the public.  Then bloggers are picked to review and nominate books from each genre.  You can read about it on the site, if you’re interested.

My question is, how can I get in on this gig?  I’d like to read a pile of books and pick which one is best!  That sounds like fun!  I suppose I have to qualify as a blogger of children’s books to be picked.  I’ll just have to add that to my to-do list: read more children and young adult books.  I can handle that.