Ten Hidden Gems from the Cybils Nominees List

It is a unique and terrible torture to have to pick seven worthy books from a list of nearly 200. There were so many books that could have easily made our top seven, and I wish we could have posted a top ten, top twenty (top fifty, top hundred…).

Because these almost-books are still terrific, I thought I would highlight ten books that stood out to me but didn’t make the shortlist. In alphabetical order:

 Chopsticks, Jessica Anthony and Rodrigo Corral

Chopsticks is a really interesting book. A romance between a troubled piano-playing prodigy and her artist next-door-neighbor, it uses a variety of different media, including photos, drawings, newspaper clippings, music, chat transcripts, and YouTube videos to tell their story. When people start talking about the possibility of enhanced e-books to tell new kinds of stories, Chopsticks will be remembered as one of the first to explore mixed media (an enhanced e-book is available on iTunes, although it didn’t get terrific reviews). I read Chopsticks in about an hour and then spent another hour flipping through it, thinking about the various clues and hints hidden throughout the books images and texts. It’s a book that rewards thinking outside the box, with a fascinating story and a unique approach to what story-telling can be.

 Crazy Dangerous, Andrew Klavan

There’s not a lot of YA thriller, which is a shame because done well, like Crazy Dangerous, it can be great fun. Teen Sam Hopkins stands up for eccentric classmate Jennifer against a bully and finds himself caught in a mystery. The two very different literary styles play against reader expectations and set up an ending that I didn't see coming. A great pick for anyone looking for some YA thrills.

Four Secrets, Margaret Willey

In Four Secrets, three best friends sent to a juvenile detention facility slowly recount the events that brought them there. After reading a dozen multiple-narrator books, I was blown away by how well Margaret Willey created unique, distinct characters that stood out in different ways. I fell in love with bold, strong Katie; shy, creative Renata; and smart, honorable Nate. Although their story seems like it will have a clear resolution--within the first chapter, you learn they're in juvie for kidnapping a bully--it's much more about how secrets shape people and how choosing to keep (or share) those secrets can have unimaginable impacts.

Getting Over Garrett Delaney, Abby McDonald

I have such a soft spot for this book. Admittedly, I get a little tired of reading the same girl-falls-in-love YA (especially when the guy is a little...meh...), so this one, about a girl getting over the guy friend who takes her for granted, stood out. I have a feeling there are a lot of teen girls out there who can relate to Sadie, who's been pining for best friend Garrett since the day they met. When Garrett goes away for the summer, Sadie realizes their friendship is a bit one-sided and decides to give up on Garrett cold-turkey. Her plan to reinvent herself--which includes new friends, a new job, and figuring out just what she really cares about--exposes some realities for her, and her two-steps-forward-one-steps-back approach made me laugh.

Getting Somewhere, Beth Neff

Great book, terrible title (every time I saw it I'd say "Which one is that?"). Four troubled girls wind up at a farm in lieu of juvenile detention, and as they slowly begin to open up and learn more about each other and themselves, one makes a drastic decision to sabotage the entire project. YA fiction loves to go dark, and while Getting Somewhere covers dark material--prostitution, drugs, abuse--it does so with sensitivity and grace while still keeping its heroines colored with shades of gray. And it was one of the few YAs I read that featured strong adult characters--in this case, three women--whose relationships with the girls helped push the story forward.

 Graffiti Moon, Cath Crowley

Another multi-narrator story, Graffiti Moon takes place over a single night, as Lucy, a budding artist, scours the city with a sort-of friend, Ed, in search of an elusive graffiti artist known as Shadow. As Lucy and Ed share the narration, readers get to see something that Lucy doesn't: Ed actually is Shadow and has long harbored a crush on Lucy. It was fascinating to see a romance play out between two characters coming to the table with vastly different information, and the build-up to the inevitable moment when Lucy learns the truth kept me turning the pages.

How to Save a Life, Sara Zarr

Two girls from drastically different backgrounds are thrown together when Jill's mother decides to adopt Mandy's unborn baby. What really stood out to me was the sensitivity and insight Sara Zarr brought to these two girls. Neither were perfect, but I could understand Jill's rough-edged anger as well as Mandy's awkward and uncomfortable attempts to make connections with people. Their stories and their ever-shifting relationship with each other captivated me and stuck in my mind long after I'd finished reading.

Perfect Escape, Jennifer Brown

I'm a sucker for both road stories and sibling stories, and so Perfect Escape really resonated with me. The story of two siblings whose relationship is burdened by one's OCD, Perfect Escape beautifully captured the nuances of a brother-sister relationship. Kendra and Grayson set out on the road in the hopes they'll leave the problems of their lives behind them, but of course, escape isn't as easy as they think. There aren't many YAs that focus on sibling relationships, despite how important these relationships can be for teens, and Perfect Escape expertly mines this relatively-unexplored territory. The friendship they develop--and test--over the course of their trip hints at the kind of people they will someday become and the kind of relationship they'll carry with them for the rest of their lives.

Personal Effects, E.M. Kokie

 I have to admit, Personal Effects snuck up on me. I didn't expect to be so blown away by the story of a teen boy searching for answers after his older brother is killed in Iraq. Like Perfect Escape, Personal Effects delved deep into the relationship between two brothers and the secrets that even close siblings keep from each other. As Matt digs into his brother's past, hoping for something to remember him by, he learns more than he wanted to know and must grapple with the idea that his brother might have been a stranger his whole life. A powerful story about love, loss, and forgiveness, Personal Effects is a great read and deserves a spot on any shelf.

 The Boy Recession, Flynn Meaney

 The last choice on my list is another light read, one of the few nominees that actually made me laugh out loud. At Kelly Robbins' school, a series of random events has drastically shifted the boy-girl ratio in the boys' favor, meaning she now has competition for the attentions of her sweet friend Hunter. Although the romance didn't offer many surprises, the methods the girls went to ensure they weren't dateless and the obvious delight of the now-in-demand boys were pure enjoyable silliness--I especially loved one enterprising boy's PG-13 escort business, ensuring paying ladies a wide selection of handsome, intelligent, gentlemanly dates in time for prom. A surprisingly smart undercurrent of feminist theory--supplied by Kelly's budding journalist best friend--kept this story from getting too frivolous and offered up an intriguing question that (I hope) will be answered in a sequel: how would things fare if the boys outnumbered the girls?

An Elementary Office

When I saw that yesterday would have been Sherlock Holmes' 159th birthday, I wondered if I could find any Holmes-themed offices for the first Writing Spaces post of 2013.

Imagine my surprise and delight, then, to discover an actual Sherlock Holmes museum, complete with recreations of Holmes and Watson's offices (leave it to the Brits).

all images via

Here's one of Holmes' desks, complete with chemistry set, very steampunky-looking microscope, and a measuring tape that's right out of "Today's Featured Items" on etsy.

Here you can see Holmes' violin, as well as a nice look at the two-toned gold and violet wall (awesome)

The whole room!

I am especially jealous of that cozy fireplace and the squashy armchair

My Big Ole Breakdown of the Cybils Books I Read

The 84 books I read as a YA Fiction judge for the 2012 Cybils represent a (somewhat) random sampling of what was getting published last year, and to get a better sense of what publishing looked like, I've put together a breakdown of the who, what, when, and where these books featured.

Please keep in mind that some of this (especially the plot points) is subjective and that I am about as far away from a statistician as one could possibly get. These are the aspects that most interested me, so if you're curious about any other distinguishing features (cover design, length, first person vs third person), let me know and I'll continue to update this post.


NARRATORS:

I counted 113 total narrators in 84 books. Breaking it down by gender, the girls beat the boys by more than two-to-one.

But if you look at the actual books, the numbers even out a little more, as more multiple narrator books tended to have one boy and one girl. The book with no narrator is October Mourning: A Song for Matthew Shepard, which is a book of poems told from multiple points of view, including inanimate objects.

Looking at the racial background of the narrators, it's perhaps unsurprising that the vast majority are white, with only 6 (5%) black, 5 (4%) Latino, and less than 1% each Indian and Cambodian. I should note, though, that two books feature very strong secondary characters who are black: Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (Earl) and Boy21 (Russell aka "Boy21," who is also featured on the cover rather than the white narrator).

Other things I noticed about the main characters: all were "straight" except for one, who is lesbian (The Miseducation of Cameron Post), and one is intersex (Confessions of a Teenage Hermaphrodite, which uses the outdated term "hermaphrodite" to describe the intersex main character).


SETTING:

Almost all the books (80%) take place in the US or in the US plus another country. Only 17 (20%) take place outside the US.

By continent, that means that North America is the most popular location, with Europe and Asia taking the second and third spots. Here's the full list of non-US locales:

Amsterdam

various locations throughout Europe

Cambodia

Prague

London

India

Cape Town, South Africa

Britain and France

United Arab Emirates

throughout the Congo

Iceland

Italy

England

Australia

Thailand

Mexico

Germany

throughout Latin America

Canada

By time, most books (86%) take place in present day, while only 12 (14%) take place in the past (as a fan of historical fiction, this made me a bit sad...).

I've enlarged this graph a bit so you can better see the years at the bottom. Math people will notice that these numbers don't equal 12; that's because I've broken it up by decade, so that a book that takes place from 1930-1950 (for example) would be counted as taking place in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. Here are when the twelve historical novels actually take place:

1530s-1540s

1850s-1870s

1880s

1930s-1940s

1939-1975

1947

1960s

1970s

1971

1980s

1989

1998-present

PLOT:

When looking at plot, I compared books on two of the most prevalent themes: romance and death. 

For a book to have a romantic element, the main character (or one of the main characters) had to either be in a relationship with someone when the book starts or develop a relationship during the story.  

 

Here, most YA books had some kind of romantic plot, which isn't surprising considering I've heard YA editors say they don't think it's possible to publish YA that doesn't feature romance. But I thought it was interesting that if you look at the shortlist, three of the seven (Endangered, Code Name Verity, and Me and Earl and the Dying Girl) don't feature a romance, while three more (The Theory of Everything, Boy21, and I Hunt Killers) have characters already in relationships when the novel begins, and so the relationship doesn't have a strong impact on the overall plot. In fact, only The Storyteller puts a romantic element front and center, which should offer some encouragement to writers tired of sticking an obligatory romance into their books.

I considered a book to have a death element if a character dies during the book or if the main character grieves someone who died before the book begins.

I was actually surprised to see that a majority of books didn't feature a death, because my fellow judges often noted how dark the Cybils list seemed to be this year. But, again, looking at the shortlist, every book features a death, almost every death is violent and unexpected, 2 books feature serial killers, and 2 feature genocide and torture. It's hard to parse out meaning from this, and I'm not sure what the takeaway is--maybe that death ups the stakes, makes us care more? I'd like to believe it's possible for a book to be a critical success without some intensely dark element, but I can think of only two books that made it to our last-round discussion that didn't feature a death.

This is probably the most subjective aspect of this breakdown. I looked at all the books and wrote down for each the themes that most jumped out at me, then added up how many books touched on those themes. A little explanation: "friendship" means books that deal primarily with a non-romantic relationship, "love" means books that deal primarily with a romantic relationship, "art" means the plot focuses on some kind of art (music, drawing, photography, etc), "crime" includes characters who broke the law as well as plots that deal with criminal activity or criminals, "politics" means books that feature political revolutions or societal upheavals.

Other popular themes, in order of most to least common:

            22 – friendship (the book features a strong non-romantic relationship)

20 – art

        7 – music

        3 – drawing

        2 – writing

                    2 – photography

        2 – filmmaking

        glass-blowing

        graffiti

        painting

        poetry writing

15 – love (the plot focuses on a romantic relationship or friendship)

            12 – crime

            10 – politics

            10 – mental illness

            10 – family

10 – sports

                    2 – ballet

                    baseball

                    basketball

                    boxing

                    football

                    ice skating

                    mixed martial arts

                    racecar driving

                    wrestling

9 – mystery

            9 – high  school issues

            7 – sexuality

            7 – parent/child or grandparent/child relationships

            7 – drugs

            5 – murder

            5 – coming-of-age

            5 – bullying

            4 – survival

            4 – beauty

            3 – weight issues

            3 – prostitution

            3 – molestation and abuse

            3 – military

            3 – healing

            3 – celebrity

            3 – animals

            2 – travel

            2 – road trip

            2 – religion

            2 – rape

            2 – poverty

            2 – disability

            2 – cancer (note: other panelists noted they read multiple books about cancer; I only read 2)

            1 – suicide

There you have it! My breakdown of the books I read for the Cybils. I hope you found this helpful and again, if there's another topic you'd like me to look into, please let me know.