"At its heart, the Cybils Awards is a group of readers passionate about seeking out and recognizing books that portray diversity, inclusion, and appropriate representation for children and teens. To accomplish that goal, the Cybils Awards works to recognize books written for children and young adults that combine both the highest literary merit and popular appeal."
These finalists are high caliber and brilliant in their own way! We have to be pretty fastidious in our evaluations of them. Sometimes it's agonizing to narrow it down to just one book.
If you are a librarian of any kind, and don't have these titles, you should add them to your must purchase list.
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| 5 stars |
The Flamingo: A Graphic Novel Chapter Book by Guojing September 20, 2022
I adore this book. The art and the story are exceptional. It's a celebration of family, of love, and of imagination. As a grandmother, I'm partial to intergenerational relationships, so this grandmother/granddaughter connection gives me all the feels.
The issue is this: is it a graphic novel or is it a picture book? It doesn't seem to fit into this category at all. It's almost completely wordless to start. Yet it is structured with the action taking place inside a graphic novel format.
If I was still working, I would definitely purchase it and add it to the other wordless picture books that I used to stimulate story writing.
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| 5 stars |
Invisible: A Graphic Novel by Christina Diaz Gonzalez & Gabriela Epstein (Illustrations) August 02, 2022
This bilingual tale (Spanish and English) is the story of a crew of Latine students who end up working together in their school cafeteria for community service.
We come to see them as unique individuals with different kinds of struggles, but just like the homeless mother and child they try to help, their differences are invisible to their supervisor who assumes they are all the same.
Gonzalez & Epstein get so much right here. I just love how well each of these characters is developed and how each of their stories and perspectives unfold seamlessly in the narrative. I love the way cells that deal with the characters have just coloured backgrounds, while others provide the bigger picture/setting. It's beautifully coloured and the simplicity of these backgrounds makes it easier to focus on the actual story. I adore how the bilingual text is set up to show a character's actual words in solid speech bubbles with the translation in dotted line. I like the variation in how the frames are laid out to direct our focus to a specific end point in the pages.
At the same time as this is a brilliant story of a group of teens overcoming obstacles and becoming friends, it's also a lesson for all of us to look behind the surface. It's there not only in how Ms Grouser is blind to their differences, but also in our own expectations of what will happen when a group of kids are called down to the office.
I'm really glad I nominated this book. I'm ecstatic that it won.
Little Monarchs by Jonathan Case
In this dystopian graphic novel, something has happened to the sun. All mammals who went out in it died. Most people now live underground and only come out at night. This story focuses on a woman, Flora, and 10 year old Elvie, who are able to live in daylight because of a medicine Flora created. It is made from monarch butterfly scales. Flora is also working on a vaccine. They have to be wary of marauding bands who attack, kill, and even eat others.
At one of their stops, after they survive an earthquake and tsunami, they find a toddler who they name Sito. Against Flora's orders, Elvie leaves a message and some medicine in case the child's parents show up. Eventually these adults do arrive, but they have ulterior motives. They plan to get rid of Flora and Elvie and start making the medicine themselves. They abandon Lewis, one of their own, by the side of the road, and almost kidnap Elvie, but she manages to rescue herself and Sito.
After a rough time in the wild, the two of them reunite with Flora and Lewis. They travel south following the Monarch route and end up staying in an abandoned mansion where Flora comes up with a vaccine. Then disaster strikes. Lewis is killed, and the three of them flee to a cave where they can over winter and follow the monarch route the next fall. The vaccine works and they are vaccinated, so they head off to Mexico in hopes of reuniting with Elvie's parents.
I liked a lot about this one. Picking up on the monarch colouring, the art is just gorgeous. I like that there is diversity, yet aside from Lewis being Latine, the only non white is Elvie. The story didn't grab me initially due to being turned off by the amount of text on some of the pages. When I finally connected to Elvie, I was pretty much driven to finish.
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| 4 stars |
Little Monarchs by Jonathan Case
In this dystopian graphic novel, something has happened to the sun. All mammals who went out in it died. Most people now live underground and only come out at night. This story focuses on a woman, Flora, and 10 year old Elvie, who are able to live in daylight because of a medicine Flora created. It is made from monarch butterfly scales. Flora is also working on a vaccine. They have to be wary of marauding bands who attack, kill, and even eat others.
At one of their stops, after they survive an earthquake and tsunami, they find a toddler who they name Sito. Against Flora's orders, Elvie leaves a message and some medicine in case the child's parents show up. Eventually these adults do arrive, but they have ulterior motives. They plan to get rid of Flora and Elvie and start making the medicine themselves. They abandon Lewis, one of their own, by the side of the road, and almost kidnap Elvie, but she manages to rescue herself and Sito.
After a rough time in the wild, the two of them reunite with Flora and Lewis. They travel south following the Monarch route and end up staying in an abandoned mansion where Flora comes up with a vaccine. Then disaster strikes. Lewis is killed, and the three of them flee to a cave where they can over winter and follow the monarch route the next fall. The vaccine works and they are vaccinated, so they head off to Mexico in hopes of reuniting with Elvie's parents.
I liked a lot about this one. Picking up on the monarch colouring, the art is just gorgeous. I like that there is diversity, yet aside from Lewis being Latine, the only non white is Elvie. The story didn't grab me initially due to being turned off by the amount of text on some of the pages. When I finally connected to Elvie, I was pretty much driven to finish.
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| 5 stars |
Swim Team by Johnnie Christmas May 17, 2022
Bree and her single parent father are moving to Florida. She is worried, but ends up meeting Clara, a girl from her new school, in the lobby of their building. When all the other clubs Bree is interested in are full, she ends up in Swim Club. Not only can Bree not swim, she's afraid of the water. The only good thing is that Clara is also a member. After cutting swim club enough times, her father finds out and hires Etta, an older swimmer, to teach her to swim.
No one is more surprised than Bree when she makes it on the school swim team, the Mighty Manatees. A group of mean girls at Holyoke Prep, a private school with top of the line amenities, go our of their way to harass the swimmers from the public school. Things start looking up when their coach enlists Etta's help with the team, but the team itself still can't seem to come together to support one another. It isn't until Bree goes out of her way to locate the members of Etta's swimming team, that her own team begins to coalesce.
I swear this book is better second time around. I appreciated just how many important issues are broached and how many important messages are revealed. It addresses racism with respect to swimming and why so many black people never learned how. It looks at white privilege. It demonstrates that teams and groups are influenced by those who hold power. It shows what can happen when people really work together. It's about the power of friendship and mentorship. I adore the relationships between the generations. I like the relationship between Bree and her father. He works too much, but still does his best to support his daughter. I also really liked the intergenerational friendship between Etta and Bree.
One of the things I liked about the font was how it showed Bree's self doubt and negativity in dark capital letter text inside overwhelming grey clouds. I appreciated the cultural authenticity in the food and that it has it's own unique labels.
I liked the bright colourful artwork. I especially admired the yellow of the Mighty Manatees compared to the other teams. On top of all the history and drama, Johnnie Christmas has added strong character development. I loved that ending with Bree and her father.
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| 4 stars |
Squire by Sara Alfageeh, Nadia Shammas March 8, 2022
Aiza, a member of the subjugated Ornu people, dreams of becoming a knight. It's the only way she will ever attain citizenship in the Bayt-Sajji Empire. When she finally gets her chance, she discovers that it's much more brutal, complicated, and full of treachery, than she could have ever imagined.
I liked this one well enough. The antiwar, don't trust authority, get to know what's behind a label, messages are relevant. The spunky girl hero is always appealing. I liked the additional information in the back matter. I'm not sure that's relevant to the quality of the book though.
I really appreciated the world building in this one. While the characters have their own personalities, I don't think there is enough discrepancy in the characters' faces. I regularly had to double check who a character was supposed to be. This might be an issue because I finished Victory. Stand! a YA title, just before starting this.
I hope there is a sequel to this.
I hope there is a sequel to this.
Committee members wondered why this wasn't in the YA category.
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| 4 stars |
Wingbearer by Marjorie M. Liu & Teny Issakhanian (Illustrations) March 1, 2022
Zuli, a young girl, is raised in a tree by birds. Souls of other birds visit before they are reborn. When souls stop coming and the tree starts dying, she sets off to find out what is wrong and save the birds. A guardian owl accompanies her. In time they connect up with a goblin and other mythical creatures.
It turns out that the party is being pursued by a Queen who wants to capture Zuli alive. We don't learn why until the end.
This is gorgeous to look at. The use of colour is brilliant. The first pages without out gutters in the usual sense are just stunning. Yet, as much as I was enthralled by this, it is very busy. It took me a while to get into this book. I had a bit of trouble keeping track of the characters. (Mostly I got the goblin and the captain mixed up.)
Rating the plot is difficult since it feels like the story is just getting started. I really hate, (almost as much as the spider trope,) that it ends in a cliff hanger.
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| 4 stars |
The Woman in the Woods and Other North American Stories by Kate Ashwin (Editor) et al
This is a collection of short stories/myths from Indigenous and Black cultures. I was half in love with this book as soon as I saw the beauty of the cover image. Alas, the inside artwork was limited to black and white. I really wanted to like this book more than I did. I like that these stories involve queer characters. I like that the stories come from different nations.
I think at least part of my difficulty with this collection, is that I compared the art work to that of graphic artist, Natasha Donovan, a truly brilliant Indigenous illustrator. I also recollected the book, This Place: 150 Years Retold, a collection of stories from Indigenous cultures. It won the Cybils award in 2019. This book just doesn't compare.
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