Thus far, twenty-seven poetry books have been nominated in the CYBILS awards. Those of you still waiting should start looking at the clock: You only have ONE WEEK to make an nomination: or until midnight on November 21st to get your nominations in. Once Thanksgiving’s here, it’s too late!

( List of current nominees behind the cut )

A point to you if you correctly identified that as a quote from the song "I Don't Like Mondays" from the Boomtown Rats. My googling to confirm that I was properly identifyin the title and band turned up a clip about the 16-year old girl who inspired the song: she opened fire with a rifle on a bunch of kids one day, killed the school principal and ( Read more... )

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Laura Purdie Salas, who is on the poetry nominating committee for this year's CYBILS awards, has put together a list of seven poems which, as of this morning have not yet been nominated for a 2007 CYBILS award, and according to Laura, she's only getting started: All seven of the poems listed by Laura are from the same house, Wordsong, an imprint of ( Read more... )

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On Saturday, I spent the day at the Busch Campus Center of Rutgers University, in Piscataway, New Jersey. I started my day in bed with the lovely Angela DeGroot, a local writing friend. Minds out of the gutters, folks-I was sharing a hotel room with Angela and my friend Colleen Rowan Kosinski, and there were three bodies and two beds. And Colleen ( Read more... )

Following is a list of all the blogs that are featuring individual snowflakes from the Robert's Snow fundraising auction during the upcoming week, in case you want to know where to look every day to see snowflakes, information and even interviews (in some cases) and contests (in others) with some of the best illustrators in the children's book biz ( Read more... )

At the end of last month, Robert Mercer lost his fight with cancer. Robert was the husband of author/illustrator Grace Lin. Grace has been the driving force behind a campaign to raise money for cancer research through the program known as Robert's Snow: for Cancer's Cure, which many in the kidlitosphere are aware of. It involves illustrators and ( Read more... )