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The announcement of all of the judges and panelists for the Cybils started on Friday, and today my own category of Fiction Picture Books is featured. Congratulations to all the folks selected throughout the Cybils, and a special shout-out to my crew. I'm looking forward to working with you, and here's a bit about me.

I did want to take a moment to paraphrase what Anne Levy, Cybils founders and administrator, said about selecting the judges: it was really hard. We had about twice as many candidates as positions. All of the organizers take it very seriously, trying to place people in their first or second choices, while trying to get a balanced group in a variety of ways. When we can't place someone in our group that we had in last year's, we're often recommending them to another category. But that's still tough, because it is pretty likely the other group also has more volunteers than they need and they are doing the same thing.

While we look at a number of things - including blog, occupation, experience, credentials, and more - I'd advise potential candidates to think of their email request to the Cybils as a resume. Follow the instructions given on the site. Tell us a bit about you. If you want a category that isn't represented on your blog, tell us why. Show some enthusiasm if you feel it, and if you don't feel it, you probably shouldn't apply. Highlight your credentials - which can be as simple as being a parent of preschoolers. That certainly matters to me. Do this even if you think we know you, because if the person who does know you well has to pass for some reason, than the other organizers need to get a little flavor of who you are.

I would have loved to take everyone who wanted to work in Fiction Picture Books, but I had to narrow my choices down. Even so, I expanded my panelists from five to seven to accommodate a few more bloggers. And here are they are:

Panelists (Round I Judges):

Emily Beeson, Homespun Light
Pam Coughlan, MotherReader
Travis Jonker, 100 Scope Notes
Natasha Maw, Maw Books
Dawn Mooney, Five Minutes for Books
Kiera Parrott, Library Voice
Jennifer Warton, Jean Little Library

Judges (Round II):

Becky Bilby, In the Pages
Katie Davis, Brain Burps about Books
Tess Goldwater, Kid's Book Blog
Melanie Hope Greenberg, Mermaids on Parade
Danielle Smith, There's a Book

1. The Wally Report: Wally's check-up with the veterinary neurologist went well yesterday. The vet agreed that he seems to be regaining function. Wally starts pet physical therapy tomorrow. The vet led hubby to believe that we might get lucky enough for him to make a pretty rapid recovery. (I'm not holding my breath, but it sure would be nice!)

2. The 2010 CYBILS Poetry Panels were announced today at the CYBILS blog. First-round panelist Elaine Magliaro is today's Poetry Friday host. We're lucky to once again have folks who really know their poetry on board!

3. In case you missed my post the other day, Breaking Waves, an e-book anthology to benefit the Gulf Coast Oil Spill Fund, launched the other day, complete with my poem "Troubled Water", which closes the e-book. I am extremely grateful to for blogging about it yesterday, since she has a million billion followers. (Okay, I exaggerate - but seriously, she has nearly 7,000 followers on LiveJournal alone!)

4. I am in the pre-thinking phase for a new project. I'm not certain I'll be able to pull it off, but I'm hopeful. Let's leave it at that for now.

5. My picture book, At the Boardwalk, has an illustrator - and it's Spanish artist Mónica Armiño! You can see some of her work at her blog. ¡Que bonito! M would love to see this Viking guy in At the Boardwalk. Meanwhile, I am seriously in love with her Narcissus. *swoon*

bonus: A thank you to for featuring my post How to be a rock star at public appearances on his blog today. It was lovely to get comments from new acquaintances!

That's the first time I've ever shouted a blog post title. But I am excited.

Any reader of my blog knows just how much I love the Cybils Awards. Not only does the awards process generate reading lists of really truly excellently great books (like these), but it also gives us bloggers a chance to come together as a community and be awarders ourselves, recognizing, in a very public way, the books we love best.

I have been a first round panelist for several years, and recommend the experience 100 percent. I have become friends with authors and readers, I have read many great books, and I've felt that my voice made a difference to the success of books I love. If you are a blogger (reader, author, librarian, teacher, parent) being a panelist or judge for the Cybils is, bar none, a tremendously rewarding experience.

The call has now gone out! Head over to the Cybils, read about what it entails, and throw your name into the hat! (by Sept. 15)

And another very important thing--the lists of nominated books are chosen by readers. ANY READERS. One book per category per reader, submitted the first few weeks of October. I'm now mulling over my lists of various categories--the easy readers, the picture books, the non-fiction, etc, to decide what books I'm going to put on the lists (extrapolating from what was the case last year, I imagine the books have to have been published between October 15th 2009, and October 15th 2010). My 10 year old loves this part of the process too, because who doesn't want the books they love to get their chance to shine?

(and anyone who, for lack of anything better to do, wants my personal take on what it all involves is welcome to contact me!)

I seriously have almost nothing for you today. *rummages around in bin of possible blog topics*

Let's see - I could tell you how very much I love Biffy Clyro's song, "Many of Horror", which is somewhere on the Charlie St. Cloud soundtrack. Not that it's easy to find that information because they haven't actually released a soundtrack, or even a list of songs on it (although you can buy the score), but I have squirreled around teh interwebs and found out eight of the songs used in either the film or the trailers - and I happen to love all of them. Good job, Ms/Mr Music-Picker, say I, while shaking my fist at whoever made it so hard to find out. (I'll put the list in the comments, in case anyone else is interested, but man, I love every single song. Weird, but true. I especially love "When We Were Dreaming" by the Pink Mountaintops and the Biffy Clyro song, both of which are strangely violent romantic songs.)

OR I could talk about how delicious my biscotti are. I baked them the other day, and they include slivered almonds, chocolate chips and dried cherries. NOM!

OR I could tell you about my time at Borders today, which featured a man snoring VERY LOUDLY (true fact: everyone stared and laughed and whatnot for a good 5-10 minutes, until the cafe manager decided to interrupt the man's noisy nap as a courtesy to the entire cafe and surrounding area). While working there, I crossed bunches of things off my list, including the last of the revisions to a collection of poems for middle graders that I wrote last Christmas time, the completion of one proposal for next year's NESCBWI conference, the drafting of a bio for this year's CYBILS awards site, and updating my writer's resume to include new publication details, some of which I haven't yet told you about. But I will. Soon. And I wrote up writerly goals for the next week. So much to do, so much to do.

But first, I am enjoying my tea and biscotti, whilst listening to "Many of Horror".

It is a chilly, grey evening here in southern New England; the rain, which made me happy at 6:00 a.m. (goodness knows we needed it), has overstayed its welcome. It cheered me no end, however, to see over at the Cybils blog the first stirrings of new life...with its promise of a new exciting season of book celebrating to come!

For those who don't know the Cybils, these are awards given by bloggers to books that combine quality writing and kid appeal. Since 2006, anyone who wanted to has nominated the books they loved best in a variety of categories, and panels of bloggers have created shortlists (I've been lucky enough to have been a panelist several times), and picked winners. The Cybils Shortlists are pretty much must read books in my opinion (many of them I Love, and there's only one I didn't enjoy at all. But not because it wasn't a good book).

And so, in an anticipatory spirit, I thought it would be fun to have a poll to see which, of all the books shortlisted in my favorite categories of sci fi/fantasy for middle grade and YA readers from 2006-2009, is the most best beloved! It's a long list--in 2006, there were only 5 books on the short list, but the astronomical increase in the number of books nominated meant that by 2009, middle grade and YA were two categories, with seven shortlisted books each.

Here's the poll; please vote for your favorite.