Children’s Book Awards: Cybils Nominations Open Tomorrow!

Sep 30, 2012

Two years ago tomorrow, I wrote a post with the how-to’s and what-fors of nominating a book for the  Childrens and Young Adult Bloggers Literary Awards, aka Cybils!

Rather than re-create the wheel, I am going to cheat (we can do that, I learned at KidLitCon this weekend) and recombine some posts to give you instructions on how to nominate books so that you are ready to go when the clock strikes 12:01 EDT.

1. Before you start nominating, you’ll want to gather a few pieces of data, starting with publication date.

To be eligible for this year’s Cybils, a book must be published between 16 October 2011 and 15 October 2012

If you’re not sure, bookseller websites usually include that level of detail. For example, when you search for a book at BarnesandNoble.com, you’ll get the exact publication date (month/day/year) in the return.

2. Write down the ISBN for two or three books in the category(ies) you want to add nominiations. A book can only be nominated one time, so if you try to add a book that’s already there, the online form will kick it back to let you know it’s been nominated already.

There are ten categories, and you can nominate ONE book in any or all of those categories.

If you’re not sure which category a book should go in, make your best placement. If the organizers think it needs to be moved, they’ll take care of that for you.Here are the genre definitions from the Cybils blog for each of the categories.

Last but not least, be sure to have the title and the full author’s handy.  By using an online form, Team Cybils makes it easy for you to nominate your favorites of the last year. Making sure the title is correct (A Birthday for Bear v. The Birthday Bear) could make the difference on whether your nominated book moves forward.

If you have additional questions, I’d recommend visiting the Frequently Asked Questions page on the Cybils Website.  On Friday, when nominations open, there will be one master post with links to each of the category nominations posts.

Believe it or not, one of my favorite parts of the process is learning about books I hadn’t heard about before. There will be plenty I know and a few familiar faces, but there are always new titles that I want to check out.

So what are you nominating? My TBR pile needs a boost! Leave a link to your post and I’ll come visit so we can chat about the process as it moves forward.

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