announcing...Cybils Poetry Award Winner 2015!

Now let's load some serious love all over the Cybils Poetry Award Winner for 2015!  Over at her Poetry for Children blog, Sylvia Vardell summarizes the process of nomination and first-round panel selections for this award.   These fine folks read widely and chose seven outstanding books as finalists.

I served as one of the 2nd round judges who studied and discussed the merits of these seven finalists in passionate detail, with guidance from Jone MacCulloch.  Now, after keeping mum for almost two weeks, Diane Mayr, Rosemary Marotta, Linda Baie, the aforementioned Laura Shovan and I can shout our choice from the tops of our blogs!  (Drum roll please....)

The 2015 Children's and Young Adult Bloggers Literary Award 

for Poetry goes to...

FLUTTER AND HUM/ALETEO Y ZUMBIDO
by Julie Paschkis

All of us judges will no doubt be sharing our personal feelings on this book, but for now, here's the official blurb:

In Flutter and Hum: Animal Poems/Aleteo y Zumbido: Poemas de Animales, Julie Paschkis adds several layers to a focused study of 14 animals. In a note, author/illustrator Pashkis explains her process. She began by writing about each animal in Spanish, then composed a fraternal twin poem in her native English.

Paschkis’s art itself is a joy, and within these pages words swirl through motifs surrounding the animals and the poems.  For example, for the poem, "Dog," the text reads "His wagging tail/fans wild happiness/into the wide world.” Paschkis embeds into the art the complementary English words bump, bounce, and abound, along with the Spanish words juego, rebote, and pronto, which mean game, rebound, and soon.   All invite the reader to make additional linguistic and visual connections. Each page is a splash of wonder.

Comments from our judges include: “The author has combined so many elements for each poem and illustration that I kept finding something new each time I looked at it.” Also: “The poems are challenging and provocative”. . . “this book MATTERS, poetically and culturally.”

Flutter & Hum will find a broad audience--from the youngest readers, to native Spanish speakers enjoying poems in their language, to those learning to read and speak Spanish or English. The brief, deceptively simple poems beg to be read aloud.  It is the total package: unique, unexpected and delightful.