Cybils 2018: And the winner is...

The Cybils Awards (The Children's and Young Adult Bloggers' Literary Awards) aims to recognize the children’s and young adult authors and illustrators whose books combine the highest literary merit and popular appeal.

The Cybils Award winners for books published in 2018 (and the last quarter of 2017) have been announced! But first, some background... 48 poetry books were nominated last fall and then 7 poetry books were selected for the shortlist in December by a committee of judges. The books they selected for the shortlist in the poetry category included: 

Can I Touch Your Hair? by Irene Latham and Charles Waters (Carolrhoda Books)

H Is For Haiku: A Treasury of Haiku from A to Z by Sydell Rosenberg (Penny Candy)

In the Past: From Trilobites to Dinosaurs by David Elliott (Candlewick Press)

Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds (Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books)

Mary's Monster: Love, Madness by Lita Judge (Roaring Brook Press)

The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo (HarperTeen)

Traveling the Blue Road: Poems of the Sea edited by Lee Bennett Hopkins (Seagrass Press)

Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds (Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books)

Each of these books was obviously beautifully written and innovative in it's own way. I was lucky enough to serve as a Round 2 judge and we had a heckuva time comparing these "apples and oranges" with anthologies, poetry, picture books, and novels in verse among these finalists. But our charge was to close only ONE book. 

In the end, the winning book is... Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds.

Here's the blurb our committee wrote for this winning book:

LONG WAY DOWN is a tour de force work of poetry. The entire novel in verse takes place on an elevator ride as a young man whose brother has been shot and killed descends to avenge his murder. Along the way, he is visited by the ghosts of those he has lost, the elevator filling with smoke as each enters to question, chide, taunt, and harangue him. This masterful narrative structure and the claustrophobic setting in that metal box filled with smoke, ghosts, and words create a gripping tension and kinetic energy that make LONG WAY DOWN nearly impossible to put down. Jason Reynolds’s spare, lyrical language and gorgeous, mesmerizing imagery stay with you and compel re-reading and discussion. This novel in verse makes maximum use of the format, using the poem placement, the background art, and the free verse poems themselves all working in harmony. Reynolds varies his approach to the poems to keep the tension high, repeating references, using anthropomorphism, and incorporating anagrams that startle, like a pause for a breath. His use of poetic language is vivid and powerful including: “how do you hug what’s haunting you?”, “another piece of me, an extra vertebra, some more backbone”, “headlock that felt like a hug”, and “pushing the pistol under my pillow like a lost tooth.” The questions this book raises about the cycle of violence and the responses it evokes also make LONG WAY DOWN a natural for discussion with young readers themselves.

You can find more about ALL the winners in all the categories here.

As it happens, our Round 2 Poetry Committee Chair, Jone, is rounding up all the Poetry Friday posts and I just noticed her post is a lot like mine (oops, surprise, surprise), but that's OK. Poetry deserves all the promotion it can get, right? Go link up with all the wonderful Poetry Friday people at Jone's blog, Check it Out, right now!