THE CYBILS ARE HERE! THE CYBILS ARE HERE!

For the past three years, I have had the honor of serving as a panelist for the CYBILS awards. In 2008, I was on the YA nonfiction panel. In 2009 and 2010 I did nonfiction picture books. We started out with about one hundred books in mid-October (I think the exact number was 112) and whittled it down to seven of our favorites (NOT an easy decision!). A second round of judges had the incredibly difficult job of selecting the best book from those seven books.

As I was frantically reading nonfiction picture books, other panels were reading in other genre- picture books, easy readers, poetry, graphic novels, intermediate grade novels, YA novels. I have loved, loved, loved serving on the committee. There is nothing more fun than getting to talk books with extraordinary teachers, librarians, and booksellers from all over the world.

Anyway, today the winners were announced! THE EXTRAORDINARY MARK TWAIN, ACCORDING TO SUSY won the nonfiction picture books. Some of my other personal favorites won too- these- included INTERRUPTING CHICKEN (fiction picture books), YUMMY (graphic novels), and ORIGAMI YODA (intermediate grade novels).

Head over to the CYBILS website to check out all the other winners!

Two more Life-Size books- Teruyuki

REVIEW COPIES PROVIDED BY PUBLISHER

This is my third year as a judge for the CYBILS. After I read the books myself, I always take them to school to try them out with kids. Last year, one of the most-loved, most-borrowed (and most fought-over) Cybils nominees was Teruyuki Komiya's LIFE-SIZE ZOO. I'm not surprised, then, to see two more "Life-Size" books on the list of CYBILS nominees. These books are kid (OK, and adult!) reading magnets.

If you are not familiar with the series, you absolutely need to check it out. Each of these large (12"x 18") books begins with a table of contents cleverly designed as a map similar to what you would pick up when you entered a zoo or aquarium. From there on, though, it's gorgeous photograph after gorgeous photograph after gorgeous photograph of animals. And they are all life-sized! MORE LIFE-SIZE ZOO features a four-fold (ok, this one is a little hard to fold) lion, another four-page spread of a hippopotamus, a baby kangaroo eating a stalk of grass, a two-page polar bear head, a cheetah, a bison, a leopard, a racoon, and several other more unusual animals, such as an okapi and a gibbon. LIFE-SIZE AQUARIUM includes a little of everything you might see in an aquarium- fish, penguins, whales, dolphins, lizards, sea turtles, jellyfish, etc. My favorites were the four-page walrus (close enough to count the hairs on his face and marvel over his long tusks), the four-page orca, and the fin on the sea turtle.

The LIFE-SIZE books are relatively simple in format, but also contain some great textual tools. A bar down the right side of each page highlights the part of the body that's been photographed, a TIME FOR A CLOSE UP section points out four or five key features and sometimes identifies their purpose, then a FACTS section gives four or five important facts. These books, aside from being so dang much fun, would be great mentor texts for young children learning to write research reports.

Can't wait to see Teruyuki Komiya's next LIFE-SIZE book. This series is terrific!

Bugs and Bugsicles: Insects in the Winter by Amy S. Hansen

There's a cold wind blowing in Colorado tonight. And even though the trees are still sporting scarves of red and gold, and even though it's supposed to be 71 degrees on Saturday for the boys' last regular season football game, I can't help but think that winter is right around the corner.

It's a perfect night, then, for BUGS AND BUGSICLES. The book begins in late September, when a monarch butterfly, a honey bee, pavement ants, a praying mantis, a field cricket, and an arctic woolly bear caterpillar are just beginning their preparations for winter. Author Amy S. Hansen then follows eight different insects' journey through the winter.

The praying mantis lays three hundred eggs in a sticky, foamy egg sack, then dies. The ladybug engages in a special kind of hibernation (diapause), awakens in spring to mate, then most likely dies before summer. The Monarch Butterfly migrates to Mexico. And most interesting, the Arctic Woolly Bear Caterpillar freezes into a "bugsicle" then thaws out the next spring (and does this seven years in a row!)

The graceful, almost poetic writing in this book is enhanced by wildlife illustrator Robert Kray's beautiful, super-detailed illustrations of insects in a variety of habitats. Appendices include two experiments for young scientists to try. There is a also a list of books and websites for further reading, as well as a glossary and index. And for those of us who are trying to help kids understand text structures, this is a great example of an enumerative text with parallel topics.

The Wonders Inside the Human Body- Silver Dolphin Books

Publisher: Silver Dolphin Books
Copyright: 2009
Review copy provided by publisher

I'm dating myself, but when I was a little girl, one of the books I absolutely loved was the WORLD BOOK ENCYCLOPEDIA, and specifically the H volume of the WORLD BOOK. I loved H because H contained the Human Body. And the Human Body had all of these great color transparency diagrams. First, you saw the outside of the body. Carefully, carefully turn that page, and you saw the nerves and blood vessels. Turn again, and you were inside the body, looking at the organs. I spent hours poring over the pages in that book (and fighting with my sisters over who got to look at the H book, but that's a story for another day).

Recently I received a review copy of THE WONDERS INSIDE THE HUMAN BODY. As I read through it, I felt like I was carried back in time to my WORLD BOOK ENCYCLOPEDIA DAYS, except this book is way, way better than that. WONDERS INSIDE THE HUMAN BODY has over 90 pages of color transparencies, way, way, way cool photographs, sophisticated diagrams, and cut aways. The text in the book is minimal, instead, most of the information is contained in the extensively labeled photographs and diagrams. There are two page spreads on any number of aspects of the human body- different organs, systems, senses, etc.

This book would make a terrific Christmas present. It would be a terrific invitation for those "developing readers" in your life- they could pore over the images in this book for hours, and the need to know about those pictures would get them through the brief amount of text. It would be a great mentor text for a nonfiction unit- you could teach kids about simple and complex diagrams, cutaways, writing interesting captions. There is also a really interesting color coded table of contents.

A plethora of images and information sure to delight any reader…