What are they up to?

Most awards competitions make you wait until their final announcement to discover the winner, leading to all sorts of speculation. Not us! We're going to torture you first.

The organizers have given status reports on our tippy-top-secret Yahoo! group, where we hold important discussions about books, make up new rules to contradict the old rules and snicker about what you're wearing.

Okay, we have no idea what you're wearing.

So let's skip right to the status reports, in which we show off that we have lots of status and you don't, so you're stuck waiting for the winners' list anyway. Hah!

Here goes: 

Graphic Novels: No word yet. 

Fantasy and Science Fiction: Very close to picking a winner.

Fiction Picture Books: Finished judging.

Middle Grade Fiction: No decision yet. 

Non-Fiction, MG/YA: The discussions are "flying" but no decision yet.

Non-Fiction Picture Books: Finished judging.

Poetry: No decision yet.

Young Adult Fiction: Narrowed down to two closely matched titles. 

There you have it ... an update on the judging so far.

Remember, the winners will be posted here at 4 p.m. EST on February 14th. 

Comments

[Erin]

Only one more week, YAY!

[J. L. Bell]

Now that the many-headed hydra is about to actually give out the awards, I'm wondering what the singular form is. People have written about "the Cybils" and "the Cybils Awards." So is the singular a "Cybil" or a "Cybils Award" or a "Cybil Award"?

[Anne]

Ah, a copyeditor after my own heart. Since it's an acronym (however sloppy) for Children's and YA Bloggers' Literary Awards, you would win a singular award.

So you'd say "I won a Cybil!"

The "A" for "Award" would be implied. See, it's like the silent "e" on the end of words, except it's also invisible.

When referring to the contest as a whole, I don't mind its being called the "Cybils Awards" since it isn't a household name like the Oscars or the Emmies. Eventually, however, I'd hope to see "Awards" dropped as redundant, like saying "ATM Machine."

I just made all this up off the top of my head, so I hope it makes sense.