My YA fantasy & science fiction list is more of a surprise this year than usual. For one thing, Daughter of Smoke and Bone isn’t a finalist! Really thought I had a slam-dunk there. In fact, I’ve only read one, and hadn’t even heard of most of them. Not only that, but one — Angelfall — is an e-book-only publication, a first in my Cybils career, anyway. And it looks like only 2 out of 7 are part of series. Maybe we’re swinging back to a stand-alone trend? I can only hope.

I’m excited to dig into some books I wouldn’t have known about otherwise. Cybils YA F&SF: Blood Red Fire edition, you may commence! (Note: I’m not allowed to review these between now and when the winner is announced on Feb. 14, lest enterprising souls try to triangulate a winner from the judges’ reviews. I’ll have to keep with my Post-a-Day mission in other ways, which may or may not be relevant/interesting/sane. You have been warned.)

Angelfall (Penryn & the End of Days, Book 1), by Susan Ee

Anna Dressed in Blood, by Kendare Blake

Blood Red Road, by Moira Young

Misfit, by Jon Skovron

Red Glove (Curse Workers, Book 2), by Holly Black

The Girl of Fire and Thorns, by Rae Carson

The Shattering, by Karen Healey — my review

Anne Levy
Cybils

Aurora Celeste
YASFF Blog

Kimberly Francisco
STACKED

Julie Jurgens
Hi Miss Julie

Can’t wait to argue about some books with you this January!

Everyone else: nominations open at midnight tonight. Here are the eligibility rules. Go nominate!

I already re-posted the blurb for Rot & Ruin, the winner. Before the finalists were announced, I’d already reviewed Ship Breaker and Guardian of the Dead. Here’s what’s left:

PLAIN KATE, by Erin Bow: Plain Kate the carver’s daughter is such a skilled carver herself that the townspeople call her “witch-blade.” After her father’s death the town shuns her out of fear, which is just fine with Kate and her pet stray cat Taggle… until they decide she really is a witch who needs burning. Kate and Taggle escape with the help of a mysterious sorcerer named Linay, who asks for only one price — Kate’s shadow. One of my very favorite books I read this year.

Reviewed by Steph Su Reads, Miss Print, and Finding Wonderland.

THE WAGER, by Donna Jo Napoli: Retelling of an Italian folktale in which a frivolous spendthrift makes a deal with the devil that he can’t wash, cut his hair, or change his clothes for years. Unlike most deals with the devil, this one turns out to be a great idea!

Reviewed by Miss Print and Finding Wonderland.

POD, by Stephen Wallenfels: Aliens land and trap everyone inside. Why? Who the hell knows?

Reviewed by Miss Print.

BRAIN JACK, by Brian Faulkner: Like reading a video game while watching the movie Hackers on one screen and a SyFy late-night movie marathon on another. If this sounds good to you, you’ll like it.

Reviewed by Steph Su Reads and Miss Print.

The fabulous YA Fantasy & Science Fiction panel chose…

Rot & Ruin by Jonathan Maberry, the most deliciously brainy* zombie book you ever thought you didn’t want to read because you’re not into zombies. Read it anyway; you will not be disappointed. (And if you already like zombie books, well, why haven’t you shambled off to the library already?)

Here’s our blurb:

Despite a few unearthly groans at the idea of another zombie book, we were all delighted by this action-packed, original interpretation of zombie mythology. Benny doesn’t remember life before the dead rose fourteen years ago, but he blames his brother Tom for their parents’ death. Too bad the rest of Mountainside worships Tom as a zombie-hunting hero. When Benny reluctantly apprentices himself to Tom, he learns that the family zombie-hunting business is not what he expected, and all is not as it seems beyond their town in the great Rot & Ruin.

We loved Benny’s growth as a person, though his deep hatred of Tom at the beginning seemed forced. We appreciated the casual racial diversity of the characters, and the way two strong female characters get their own chances to shine. That’s right, this isn’t just a boy book! Both boys and girls will love the well-paced suspense and humor. There’s plenty of violence — it is a zombie novel, after all — but it has a cinematic feel that never gets too disgusting, and a strong sense of morality that adds depth to the story, only rarely feeling heavy-handed. We challenge you to put this book down before its heart-pounding conclusion (which leaves room for a sequel, of course). Rot & Ruin will leave everyone, zombies or not, hungry for more.

* To my panel: oh sure, now I’m all over the zombie puns!

The YA Fantasy & Science Fiction finalists are:

Brain Jack, by Brian Falkner
Guardian of the Dead, by Karen Healey
Plain Kate, by Erin Bow
Pod, by Stephen Wallenfels
Rot & Ruin, by Jonathan Maberry
Ship Breaker, by Paolo Bacigalupi
The Wager, by Donna Jo Napoli

I’m not going to lie, I’m pretty pleased with myself for successfully gaming the system — I’ve already read Guardian of the Dead, Ship Breaker, and Plain Kate (all of which I loved). Good thing, because now I only need to read 4 more awesome books this month! It is a difficult life I lead.

Nominations for the Cybils open at midnight tonight — or what you might call “October 1.”

One nomination per person, per category. But that’s a lot of categories! Bring us your favorite children’s & YA, fiction & non-fiction & poetry, genre and… can something really have no genre? Must have been published in the last year.

See you there!

Confused? The Cybils are the Children’s and Young Adult Bloggers’ Literary Awards. Here’s how it works:

1. You nominate your favorite books published between Oct. 16, 2009 and Oct. 15, 2010.
2. The Round I judges read like superhuman reading machines and choose 5 or 6 finalists in each category.
3. We Round II judges spend January reading our finalists and choose a winner!

Nominations start October 1, so start thinking about your favorites! I can’t speak for all the Cybils, but I especially love nominations of “under the radar” books that should have gotten more recognition than they did. (My fellow SF&F panelist Charlotte of Charlotte’s Library keeps an amazingly thorough list of new SF&F releases, if you can’t remember what came out this year.)

Shout-out to the rest of the SF&F team:

Panel Organizer: Sheila Ruth, Wands and Worlds

Panelists (Round I Judges), MG/Elementary:
Anamaria Anderson, Books Together
Gwenda Bond, Shaken & Stirred
Cindy Hannikman, Fantasy Book Critic
Aaron Maurer, Coffee for the Brain
Nicole Signoretta, Booked Up
Charlotte Taylor, Charlotte’s Library
Karen Yingling, Ms. Yingling Reads

Panelists (Round I Judges), Teen/YA:
Steve Berman, Guys Lit Wire
Tanita Davis, Finding Wonderland
Leila Roy, Bookshelves of Doom
Sheila Ruth (see panel organizer)
Angie Thompson, Angieville
Hallie Tibbetts, Undusty New Books
Heather Zundel, Secret Adventures of WriterGirl

Round II Judges:

Elementary/Middle
Melissa Baldwin, One Librarian’s Book Reviews
Kate Coombs, Book Aunt
Emily Mitchell, emilyreads
Nancy Tsai, Kidsmomo
Tanya Zavestoski Turek, Books 4 Your Kids

Teen/YA
Emma Carbone, Miss Print
Anne Levy, Cybils
Sam Musher, Parenthetical
Sarah Stevenson, Finding Wonderland
Steph Su, Steph Su Reads

I can’t wait to get started!

The Prince of Fenway Park, Julianna Baggott

Check this premise, people: the famous Curse on the Red Sox is a real curse, brought on by an angry faerie. Not only does it prevent the Sox from winning the Series, it also traps an odd assortment of Cursed Creatures in tunnels under Fenway Park. Oscar’s deadbeat dad turns out to be one of them, and only Oscar can break the Curse and free his father and the rest of his family.

It’s one of the most original fantasy premises I’ve ever heard, and as a Bostonian I’m contractually obligated to love it at least a little. I wanted to love it a lot — and there were things I did love about it, besides the Boston stuff.

Oscar is mixed-race, white and African-American, and adopted by white parents (ok, one turns out to be half-fae, but it’s not like that’s a box you can check on the census). There aren’t enough books like that to start with, and the way this one uses the fantasy journey to help Oscar find where he belongs is kind of beautiful. The Curse ends up being in part about how shamefully the Sox treated black ballplayers, and the parallels between Oscar and Jackie Robinson were neat. I loved that the Sox weren’t the unmitigated Good Guys — they were a deeply flawed “hero” who had to grow up in order to be worthy of having the Curse broken. It made baseball be about something deeper.

Lots of kids will love this book (though I can’t tell how many will be neither Bostonians nor baseball fans). But I was disappointed in the magic: it’s too easy, too contrived.

The Farwalker’s Quest, Jodi Sensel

In this vaguely post-apocalyptic future, almost no one ever leaves their village, and little old knowledge remains. Thirteen-year-olds Ariel and Zeke are about to choose their vocations, when they find a mysterious message dart in a tree that sends them on a long journey and changes their futures forever.

This is an old-school fantasy adventure that manages not to be (too) derivative, the above summary notwithstanding. If you like the title, you’ll like the book — it’s pretty much as advertised. I couldn’t put it down.

Slight spoiler
I have to tell you, though, that I got a little obsessed with the relationship between Ariel and her protector, Scarl — and I wasn’t alone. A bunch of us judges got vibes. The book claims that they develop a father-daughter relationship, but I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to decide how old Ariel would have to be before their 16-year age gap was no longer icky. I mean, I had a crush on Scarl, so I totally saw where Ariel was coming from. He’s all moody and tortured! (It was very Fire and Hemlock, for the three of you who get that reference.)

11 Birthdays, Wendy Mass

This is Groundhog’s Day for kids — and I love me some Groundhog’s Day, so I found it charming. If you’re looking for a slightly quirky read for nice girls who can’t get enough books about friendship and Learning About Themselves — the girls who loved Savvy — this is a solid choice. But as a potential award winner, I didn’t think it sang.

Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, Grace Lin

If you need a gift book for an elementary school girl, this is a lovely choice. It’s the children’s novel equivalent of a period piece: the set designer and costumer will win Oscars, and it’s easy to ignore the rest.

Fortunately, in this case the rest is also lovely. Lin’s writing is simple in a way that evokes mythology, but it’s meatier than Odd and the Frost Giants. The stories all weave together in a very particular way: I was reminded of Bridge of Birds, which makes me wonder if this brand of story interconnection is a feature of Chinese mythology. (Anyone know?)

I would have been totally bored by it as a kid — there’s not enough excitement, and it would have felt like something adults thought was Good for Me. But I hope not all kids are as narrow-minded as I was, because it really is an excellent book.

Odd and the Frost Giants, Neil Gaiman

This is an invented myth about a boy who tricks the frost giant who’s taken over Asgard, thereby saving his people from endless winter — it’s Neil Gaiman, doing what he does with the reinvented mythology and whatnot. It’s cute, but slight.

The Serial Garden, Joan Aiken

This is a posthumously collected book of Aiken’s short stories about the Armitage family, to whom something magical happens almost — but not every — Monday. They’re delightful, and so adorably British they created an insatiable desire for tea and crumpets… but they’re all kind of the same. Once you’ve got the hang of the amusingly blase way the Armitages react to a unicorn in their backyard or a witch teaching the neighborhood school, you could pretty much write the rest of the stories yourself.

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Our Middle Grade F & SF winner is a sequel, Dreamdark: Silksinger by Laini Taylor. I don’t really do fairies (even if you spell it “faeries”), but even I loved this. It’s a satisfying adventure that’s well worth a look. You don’t have to start with the first one, but why wouldn’t you want to?

Here are all the winners. If you’re a teacher or librarian or bookseller, talk these up — and talk up the award while you’re at it! We focus on “kid appeal” and literary quality, which is a different set of criteria than many awards. I think we fill a valuable niche and I’d love for the award to get more recognition!

Thanks to my co-panelists: I couldn’t believe how smooth and easy this process was (not to mention fun)! I’d discuss books with y’all any day.

(Finally, extra-special congratulations to my dear Kristin, who won the YA Fantasy & Science Fiction category for Fire! Woot!)

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The fabulous finalists are:

11 Birthdays, Wendy Mass
Dreamdark: Silksinger, Laini Taylor
The Farwalker’s Quest, Joni Sensel
Odd and the Frost Giants, Neil Gaiman
The Prince of Fenway Park, Julianna Baggott
The Serial Garden, Joan Aiken
Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, Grace Lin

My equally fabulous co-panelists are:

Tarie Sabido, Into the Wardrobe
Jen Robinson, Jen Robinson’s Book Page
Emily Mitchell, emilyreads
Melissa Baldwin, One Librarian’s Book Reviews

(And thank you to Ashley Bair of Everead for swapping with me!)

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