Since we’re a volunteer group, as individuals’s lives and availability change, we have to make adjustments right here as properly. We’re saying a fond farewell to Pam Margolis (who will stay as a board member), Jenna Ehler, and Joella Basecamp. We appreciated all of their laborious work and time over the previous years.
With farewells come welcomes, although. Now we have three new chairs this 12 months! Right here they’re:
Shannon Griffin can be chairing Center Grade Fiction. She writes: “I obtained my love of studying from my father; he began studying me a Grimm Fairy Story every night time at bedtime from the time I used to be 2 until I used to be studying them to him. We then dived into the world of Wonderland with Alice and I used to be offered! Books grew to become my love and I all the time had a e book (or 2 or 3) with me always, and nonetheless do. I consider each baby deserves to be represented in books and that we want extra books on the market to point out actual life conditions and the world round us. I found Judy Blume’s e book It’s Not The Finish Of The World. My mother and father had been going by means of a divorce and I felt on their lonesome; that e book made me understand I wasn’t alone and that different youngsters had been similar to me. That is after I realized books need to energy to heal. Books assist youngsters study life conditions, and the world round them. They assist them study respect and empathy in life. I’ve a deep ardour for books which have the magical energy to make a toddler a life-long reader. I publish on my weblog, Magical Surprise of Books, when time permits.”
Sondy Eklund can be chairing Younger Grownup Speculative Fiction this 12 months. She started writing Sonderbooks.com, a web site of e book opinions, in 2001, after she obtained a job working in a library on an American Air Power base in Germany and realized that sonder is a German prefix which means “particular.”
Sondy got here to libraries after ten years of educating faculty math and felt she’d discovered her calling. Working half-time in a library meant she learn extra books than ever, which is why she began writing Sonderbooks to maintain monitor of the good books she needed to inform others about. Since then, she got here again to America, obtained divorced, obtained a Grasp’s in Library Science, labored full-time as a youngsters’s librarian, and lately grew to become the youth supplies selector for her whole public library system – so she nonetheless reads voraciously, however needs to be extra selective in reviewing books, specializing in these which might be really particular.
Yearly, she posts her favourite books learn that 12 months as “Sonderbooks Stand-outs” – and appreciates that like her, the Cybils divide books into many various classes in order that there may be many “greatest” books.
Since 2012, she’s participated as a Cybils choose yearly – aside from 2017 and 2018, when she was studying for the 2019 Newbery Choice Committee. She’s largely judged Center Grade or Younger Grownup Speculative Fiction, aside from one 12 months when she judged Fiction Image Books, which occurred to be the 12 months an image e book, Final Cease on Market Road, one among our Finalists, gained the Newbery Medal. Since 2021, she’s additionally serving on the committee to decide on books for the Mathical E-book Prize, combining her love of youngsters’s books along with her love of math.
When she’s not studying or generally when she is, one among her extra uncommon hobbies is mathematical knitting. You possibly can see a gallery of her math-related knitting tasks at sonderbooks.com/sonderknitting, and a web page of math-related books for all ages at sonderbooks.com/sondermath.
Melissa Wiley can be chairing the Simple Reader/Early Chapter E-book class this 12 months. She fell in love with the Kidlitosphere earlier than it even had a reputation and has been enthusiastically running a blog about her household’s studying life at Right here within the Bonny Glen since 2005. She is the creator of two dozen books for teenagers and youths, together with The Nerviest Lady within the World, The Prairie Thief, Fox and Crow are Not Pals, the Inch and Roly collection, and the Martha and Charlotte Little Home prequels. She additionally writes middle-grade literature guides for Courageous Author‘s Dart and Arrow packages. In years previous, Melissa has served as a Cybils panelist or class chair in YA Fiction, Fiction Image Books, Graphic Novels, Simple Readers/Early Chapter Books, YA Speculative Fiction and MG Nonfiction. She appears ahead to a different full of life Cybils season stuffed with harrowing, heartening, and humorous books. She is @melissawiley on Twitter and @melissawileybooks on Instagram.
We’re so glad to have them on our workforce!