Cybils nominations are up!

The finalists for the Cybils—the Children’s and Young Adult Bloggers’ Literary Awards—are up, and here are the nominations in the graphic novels categories:

Elementary/Middle Grade

Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword, by Barry Deutsch
Nursery Rhyme Comics: 50 Timeless Rhymes from 50 Celebrated Cartoonists, by various authors
Sidekicks, by Dan Santat
Wonderstruck, by Brian Selznick
Zita the Spacegirl, by Ben Hatke

Young Adult

Anya’s Ghost, by Vera Brosgol
Bad Island, by Doug TenNapel
Feynman, by Jim Ottaviani
Level Up, by Gene Luen Yang
Page by Paige, by Laura Gulledge

A few comments: There is remarkable concordance between the nominations and our own Good Comics for Kids bloggers’ picks for the best graphic novels of 2011. Great minds think alike, I guess. Also, note that half the nominees are published by First Second Books—that really says something about the quality of the books they publish, as well as the energy of their marketing department.

At The Boy Reader, Kyle has some comments on Sidekicks and Level Up.

I have two quibbles: It’s not clear to me that Wonderstruck is a graphic novel (although we let Esther review it anyway), and Hereville was published in 2010 and has already gotten a lot of awards. Admittedly, it does fall within the dates specified by the Cybils Awards committee (October 15, 2010, to October 15, 2011), but it feels kind of old.

Anyway, I firmly believe the true purpose of awards lists like this is to give people something to argue about. So: What did they leave out, and what do you think they shouldn’t have included?

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