Happy New Year!
The 2006 Children’s and YA Bloggers’ Literary Award finalists have been announced!
Five finalists in eight categories (Fantasy & Science Fiction, Graphic Novels, Middle Grade Fiction, Middle Grade/YA Nonfiction, Young Adult Fiction, Picture Book Nonfiction, Picture Book Fiction, and Poetry) were announced yesterday at the Cybils website. The winners will be announced, well, soon. The date hasn’t been posted yet.
I served on the Nominating Committee for the Middle Grade/YA Nonfiction category and can tell you that wheedling a list of 37 excellent titles to a list of five finalists was an engaging–and difficult–task. I can only imagine what torture the past six weeks must have been for the panelists in the middle grade fiction category (63 nominations) or the Picture Book Fiction category (111 nominations!). So many fabulous books, so few awards.
The five finalists in the Middle Grade/YA Nonfiction category, listed alphabetically by title, are:
ESCAPE! The Story of the Great Houdini
by Sid Fleischman
FREEDOM WALKERS, The Story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott
by Russell Freedman
IMMERSED IN VERSE, An Informative, Slightly Irreverent & Totally Tremendous Guide to Living the Poet’s Life
by Allan Wolf
ISAAC NEWTON
by Kathleen Krull
TEAM MOON, How 400,000 People Landed Apollo 11 on the Moon
by Catherine Thimmesh
These books represent the best in MG/YA Non-fiction for 2006. If you haven’t read them yet, get to it!