Thank you, Cybils! (and a Bit on Writer Angst)

Yesterday at the brunch to which I brought the bread with cranberries cut in half, I asked a friend about her daughter, who I remember as writing like crazy as a child and teen. Her mom’s brow wrinkled. The girl is now an English major at college and seems to be not writing. More of her focus is on battling anxiety. We talked about how those may connected. I said that, I, too, had loved writing as a child, but got stymied as an English major reading the greats. What did I have to add that Shakespeare or Emily Dickinson hadn’t already written better? Most writers want to connect with others, but we have to do it in solitude, where anxiety loves to swoop. Learning to be a writer is partly learning our own ways to cope with our own angst, with tips and murmurs from the clan.

Things do get easier when we accept that someone will always write better than us, someone will write worse, and many will write just fine, but their work doesn't reach us at the moment. I’m at a point now when writing often actually helps me cope with worry and bad news. But it’s still often fraught, saved for me by falling in love with my subjects, feeling compelled to get out their stories. That’s how I spend most of my time, though there are small parts devoted to what we call marketing, but can really mean just obsessing about the many, many people who will never know my books and can I ever nudge one or two more to the side of readers? I don’t dwell in this place, but it’s lovely when I get kicked out of it by sweet attention from the world.

So I was happy to hear that Borrowed Names is a finalist in poetry for the Cybils 2010 Children’s and Young Adult Bloggers’ Literary Award. 



And what great company to be in. Cyblis finalists include Joyce Sidman, who delighted those of us who love her blend of poetry and science with not one but two books in 2010, both gorgeously illustrated. Ubiquitous: Celebrating Nature’s Survivors offers poems with subjects that move through millions of years, tracing evolution. Dark Emperor and Other Poems of the Night gives us a peek into the lives of creatures (and trees) in the night woods. Both books feature sidebars, author notes, and glossaries that add to our knowledge and amazement.

Mirror, Mirror: A Book of Reversible Verse by Marilyn Singer makes you want to stand on your head and read, or at least spin around the book for new takes on fairy tales. I’ve seen peoples’ jaws literally drop when flipping through this book. Scarum Fair by Jessica Swaim is the only finalist I haven’t yet read: apparently it features 29 poems that mix humor and horror as a boy makes his way through a nightmarish carnival.

Two beautiful collections are also on the short list for the prize to be given in February. Sharing the Seasons, edited by Lee Bennett Hopkins, offers surprising takes on swings and polliwogs, sandcastles and the summer moon, pumpkins and falling leaves, and snow people and books to curl up with. Switching on the Moon: A Very First Book of Bedtime Poems edited by Jane Yolen and Andrew Fusek Peters lets us peek into rituals such as brushing teeth, bath time, and star gazing. Like Sharing the Seasons, it includes classic poems as well as new ones, humor as well as poignant moments.

Don’t take my few words for the goodness of these books of poetry, which, of course, are only some of the books that appeared on shelves this year filled with rhyme (sometimes with sounds at the ends of lines, sometimes with images), rhythm, metaphor, flights of fancy, down to earth moments, and other good things. Click to read the beautiful descriptions of the judges. Who I thank for their reading, good-hearted arguments (I’m sure!) and choices with all my heart.