If you haven’t already found your way to the Cybils shortlists, then head on over there and check them out.

The panelists had a huge number of books to read this year - word is definitely getting round! - and now the judges have some tough choices to make.

I’m delighted to see that Wabi Sabi made it through to the finals - now we’ll just have to wait and see!

Meanwhile, there are lots of books there that we haven’t read yet, and several are going straight on to our books-waiting-to-be-read lists - such as Wangari’s Trees of Peace: A True Story from Africa by Jeanette Winter (non-fiction picture-books); and Alvin Ho by Lenore Look and The London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd (both in the Middle Grade Fiction category).

Happy reading, everyone - especially if you’re a Cybils judge!

(Click on event name for more information)

Golden Feather Literature Festival~ ongoing until Jan 31, Mongolia

5th Tales in the Park Festival~ ongoing until Feb 7, Bangkok, Thailand

Discovering Ethnic Minorities - Storytelling Workshops for Children~ ongoing until May 31, Hong Kong

2008 Cybils (the Children’s and Young Adult Bloggers’ Literary Awards) Finalists Announced~ Jan 1

Costa Book Awards Winners Announced~ Jan 6, London, United Kingdom

7th Annual Hawaii International Conference on Arts and Humanities~ Jan 9 - 12, Honolulu, HI, USA

Mitali Perkin’s Secret Keeper Book Launch Party and Writing Workshop~ Jan 15, Palo Alto, CA, USA

CISA World Symposium and Storytelling Festival: Indigenous Voices, Ancient Trade Routes~ Jan 15 - 17, San Leandro, CA, USA

Storytelling by Winners of the First Time Writers & Illustrators Publishing Initiative 2008~ Jan 17, Singapore

Newberry Library Lecture - Babes in the Wood: The Death of Childhood and the Birth of Modern Children’s Literature~ Jan 17, Chicago, IL, USA

Presentation Ceremony for the Marsh Award for Children’s Literature in Translation~ Jan 20, London, United Kingdom

20th Annual Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts and Humanities~ Jan 20 - 25, Eatonville, FL, USA

Jaipur Literature Festival~ Jan 21 - 25, Jaipur, India

SCBWI Tokyo Presents Alison Lester: From Arnhem Land to Antarctica as a Children’s Author and Illustrator~ Jan 23, Tokyo, Japan

Deb Ellis and Groundwood Books Partnership with USBBY in a Fundraiser for IBBY’s Fund for Children in Crisis~ Jan 23, Denver, CO, USA

2nd Children’s & Young Adults’ Book Fair~ Jan 23 - 26, Marousi, Greece

American Library Association (ALA) 2009 Midwinter Meeting~ Jan 23 - 29, Denver, CO, USA

ALA Youth Media Awards Announcement~ Jan 26, Denver, CO, USA

Yabun 2009: Celebrating Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Cultures~ Jan 26, Sydney, Australia

Family Literacy Week~ Jan 26 - 31, Province of British Columbia, Canada

Family Literacy Day~ Jan 27, Canada

SCBWI South Africa - Cape Town Presents What’s Happening in the SA Educational Book World~ Jan 28 , Cape Town, South Africa

3rd International Galle Literary Festival~ Jan 28 - Feb 1, Galle, Sri Lanka

Kolkata Book Fair~ Jan 28 - Feb 8, Kolkata, India

Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices Children’s Book Award Entry Deadline~ Jan 30, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom

SCBWI Annual Winter Meeting~ Jan 30 - Feb 1, New York, NY, USA

One of my favorite books of 2008 is Mark Reibstein and Ed Young’s Wabi Sabi so I’ve enjoyed reading 7-Imp’s post from earlier this month, in which Jules not only shares some of the wonderful artwork, but links to a video which I hadn’t seen - if you haven’t discovered it yet either, watch it here!

It’s great to see that Wabi Sabi is featured on a best-of-2008 list on the National Library of New Zealand’s Create Readers Blog too (as is Guji Guji, another favorite of ours!)… so now we’ll just have to see how Wabi Sabi fares in the Cybils, whose shortlists should be coming out any day now!

We will be publishing a full review of Wabi Sabi by Mark Reibstein with art by Ed Young in our next issue of PaperTigers so I’m not going to say much now - except that it is stunning and enriching, a gentle, heart-warming delight that lends itself to being read aloud in many different ways! It had already been nominated for a Fiction Picture Book Cybils Award by the time I got round to it (as had a couple of others on my list, making decisions much easier… I finally plumped for Colors! ¡Colores!, which I blogged about last week…).

We’ve been waiting for Wabi Sabi to come out for a while – and one of Aline’s and my thrills at the Bologna Book Fair in April was being shown the proofs for the book by Andrew Smith at Little, Brown and Company, where we learnt that we were not looking at the original but at the second version of art-work…

Yes, this book has an amazing, Wabi Sabi-esque story behind it. It’s hard to explain but Alvina, over at Blue Rose Girls, is the book’s editor and has blogged about its amazing story in four installments – read from Number 1 now! In the meantime, here’s what she says about what Wabi Sabi actually means:

Mark spent some time living in Japan, and while there he was introduced to the concept of wabi sabi. He asked many people about it, and they all paused and said, “That’s hard to explain.” but they would offer a poem, or a photograph, a small description, and gradually, Mark began to piece together the meaning of wabi sabi.

So, what is wabi sabi? Well, as I understand it, it is a Japanese philosophical belief in finding beauty in the imperfect, the unexpected, in simplicity and modesty. For example, a old, cracked clay tea cup is wabi sabi, but a fine china cup is not. Fallen leaves in muddy water is wabi sabi. A scruffy, multi-colored cat can be wabi sabi. Mark actually named his cat in Japan Wabi Sabi!

Her final post on the subject came out on Monday and has had me chuckling aloud – but only after I knew the outcome. All’s well, that ends well! Phew – if ever a book has gone through a parallel journey in real life, this is it!

Kidlitosphere blogger and literacy advocate Jen Robinson announces:

Nominations for the third annual Children’s and Young Adult Bloggers’ Literary Awards (the Cybils) will be open Wednesday, October 1st through Wednesday, October 15th. The goal of the Cybils team (some 100 bloggers) is to highlight books that are high in both literary quality and kid appeal. The Cybils were founded by Anne Boles Levy and Kelly Herold.

The Cybils lists, from long lists to short lists to the lists of winners, offer a wonderful resource to anyone looking for high-quality, kid-friendly books. The Cybils team has worked hard to balance democracy (anyone can nominate titles) with quality control (two rounds of panel judging by people who focus on children’s books every day). We do this work because we consider it vital to get great books into the hands of children and young adults.

To nominate titles and to learn how you can help spread the word, check the Cybils blog.

(Click on event name for more information)

Canadian Library Month~ Canada

National Reading Group Month~ USA

Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read~ ongoing until Oct 4, USA

International Children’s and Youth Literature Festival~ ongoing until Oct 4, Berlin, Germany

3rd Annual Cybils (Children’s and Young Adult Bloggers’ Literary Awards) Nominations Open~ Oct 1 - 15

National Young Writers’ Festival~ Oct 2-6, Newcastle, Australia

Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards Ceremony~ Oct 3, Boston, MA, USA

21st Yukon International Storytelling Festival~ Oct 3-5, Whitehorse, YK, Canada

2008 Ceremony of Best Books~ Oct 4, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia

Américas Book Award for Children’s and Young Adult Literature Winners Ceremony~ Oct 4, Washington, D.C., USA

Orange County Children’s Book Festival~ Oct 5, Costa Mesa, CA, USA

Children’s Book Week~ Oct 6-12, United Kingdom

13th Annual New England Conference on Multicultural Education~ Oct 8, Hartford, CT, USA

School Library Journal Webcast: Capturing Struggling Readers and Reluctant Readers~ Oct 8

Book It! Cheltenham’s Children’s Literature Festival~ Oct 10-19, Cheltenham, United Kingdom

18th Monterrey International Book Fair~ Oct 11-19, Monterrey, Mexico

YALSA’s Teen Read Week: Books With Bite @ Your Library~ Oct 12-18, USA

“Multicultural Bites” with authors Mitali Perkins, Coe Booth and An Na (part of ReaderGirlz’s celebration of Teen Read Week)~ Oct 13

Ubud Writers and Readers Festival~ Oct 14-19, Ubud, Bali, Indonesia

Frankfurt Book Fair~ Oct 15-19, Frankfurt, Germany

55th Jane Addams Children’s Book Awards Ceremony~ Oct 17, New York, NY, USA

IBBY Ireland Conference: Green Gables to Globalization: Crossover, Canada and Children’s Books~ Oct 18, Dublin, Ireland

SCBWI Tokyo Writers’ Day~ Oct 18, Tokyo, Japan

Children’s Literature Council Fall Gala~ Oct 18, Santa Ana, CA, USA

Vancouver International Writers Festival~ Oct 21-26, Vancouver, BC, Canada

The Big Picture Party: Celebrate the Power of Picture Books~ Oct 27, London, United Kingdom

Book Week~ Oct 27-Nov 9, Japan

Tomás Rivera Mexican American Children’s Book Awards Ceremony~ Oct 30, San Marcos, TX, USA

28th Santiago International Book Fair~ Oct 31-Nov 16, Santiago, Chile

Only a couple of days to go till the winners are announced - in the meantime, instead of biting your nails, hop over to the Cybils blog and vote in their polls for your favorites in each category…