by Sharon M. Draper
ages: 10+
First sentence: “Words.”
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Melody is very, very smart. She’s known words and ideas and concepts since she was very little. She loves music, and can see colors when it plays. But, she has no way to tell anyone any of this. Melody has cerebral palsey, and while she can hear and understand, she just can’t communicate. Which is incredibly frustrating to her.

She’s got her parents and her neighbor, Mrs. V, on her side: encouraging her, teaching her, trying to communicate with her. The book recounts the ups and downs she’s experienced her whole life — from birth to the fifth grade — as she tries to figure out how to communicate. She can accept most of her limitations, but she needs a way to express the words in her head. It’s an intriguing process, frustrating and hopeful, as she goes through it all, trying to figure out where she fits in this world.

If this is ever a treatise of the hopelessness of doctors and school teachers (even if there is occasionally one that “gets” it), then I don’t know what is. But, it’s also a treatise on the determination of one girl (and her family) and what that can do. It is, in many ways, a “message” book: disabled people are NOT different than the rest of us, and just because they look or act different doesn’t mean they are not worth getting to know and understand.

But Draper presents this in such a way so that the book doesn’t feel like a heavy-handed message book. It’s heartfelt, and you end up both cheering for and crying with Melody as she recounts her experience. It’s wonderfully written, and yet simple enough to be accessible to middle graders. It’s a story worth telling, and definitely one worth reading.

(Just for the record: because this is a Cybils nominee, I’ve been asked to make sure y’all know this is my opinion only, and not that of the panel.)

by Alan Silberberg
ages: 10+
First sentence: “Summer Goodman never knew what hit her.”
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This is not your average mom-is-dead book. Sure, Milo’s mom is dead; she passed away from cancer a couple years ago. But, Milo, now eleven and in his fifth house starting another new school, is determined to push past the fog and make a halfway decent go this time.

It’s not a deep book, plot-wise; it’s basically the tale of Milo putting one foot in front of the other. Sometimes he succeeds: he really likes his new best friend, Marshall; grateful for the fact that they can just hang out and drink Freezies, and that Marshall doesn’t really push or demand much. Sometimes he fails: his other neighbor, Hillary, tries to befriend Milo, but he’s so caught up in having a total and complete crush on Summer that he doesn’t notice Hillary (not in a romantic way) until it’s nearly too late. Underneath it all, though, is the pain of loss. He misses having his mother around, especially the little things.

Instead of just wallowing in the loss (well, they did that already; this book is about learning to move on), he not only figures out a way to mourn his mother, but to help his family understand and accept the loss that they all went through. And it’s done with humor, love, and some good friends. (The ending even made me cry; not the sad kind of cry, either.)

Very touching and sweet.

(Just for the record: because this is a Cybils nominee, I’ve been asked to make sure y’all know this is my opinion only, and not that of the panel.)

by Art Corriveau
ages: 11+
First sentence: “We have this dog now.”
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Nicky Flynn is not a happy camper. He’s not quite 12 years old, but his life the last few months has been turned completely and totally upside down. His parents split up, his mom dragged him away from his comfortable house, his good school, and landed in Charlestown, a not-so-prosperous area of Boston. She’s unreliable, completely worn out from her job as a secretary, and Nicky suspects that she’s not letting him see his dad. To top it off, on a whim she brought home this German Shepard, Reggie, who was a former seeing eye dog. Since his mother isn’t showing any interest in taking care of the dog, it’s just another thing Nicky has to do.

And yet, as Nicky starts walking Reggie around, he discovers that Reggie has a past, and that that past is as bit of a mystery, and through a lot of bumps and scrapes, figures out that maybe, just maybe, Reggie is the only living being he can count on in this life. Sometimes, really, the dog is your best friend. If you can only realize it in time.

It’s one of those books where the majority of adults are complete basket cases. Nicky’s not terribly sympathetic, either: he’s angry and has a temper as well as a bit of a lying problem. And yet, because the adults are so much worse, it’s quite easy to sympathize with Nicky: he is that way just because everything around him is falling apart. It’s a therapeutic book, one that looks at the aftermath of a messy divorce and sees not the roses but the thorns for most of the story. And yet, it’s depressing: there’s a lot of hope in the book (Hooray for a dog book where the dog doesn’t die!), and the relationship between Nicky and Reggie is quite wonderful (as far as dog-human relationships go).

In the end, in spite of the adults I wanted to scream at, an enjoyable book.

(Just for the record: because this is a Cybils nominee, I’ve been asked to make sure y’all know this is my opinion only, and not that of the panel.)

by Tricia Springstubb
ages: 10+
First sentence: “Fox Street was a dead end.”
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Mo Wren loves her street. She’s lived there her whole life, and it’s her whole world. She has everything she needs: people to cut hair, tutor, watch after her and her little sister Dottie, her best friend comes to visit there every summer, and even the boy down the street is beginning to look interesting. Except things are starting to change. And Mo doesn’t like that.

First bad news is that her best friend, Mercedes, says that it might be her last summer on Fox Street since her mother’s marriage to a man who’s “comfortable” (ie, not rich, but much better off than they used to be) is changing things. They might also take Mercedes’ grandmother, Da, to come live with them, too. And Mo’s dad, who hates his job as a city water and sewer employee and has just been scraping by in the years since her mom’s sudden death, is thinking about selling out to a developer to go after his dream of owning a sports bar/restaurant. Her little sister, Dottie, is a wild child without discipline, taken to wandering the neighborhood adding to her bottle collection; what else can you expect from a girl without a mother?

Somehow, though this quiet (though sometimes tumultuous), yet heartfelt story, Mo figures out that not all change is bad, that she is strong enough to make the changes necessary. And that it will probably all work out for the best. A very hopeful, charming little book.

(Just for the record: because this is a Cybils nominee, I’ve been asked to make sure y’all know this is my opinion only, and not that of the panel.)

Heroes of Olympus, book 1
by Rick Riordan
ages: 10+
First sentence: “Even before he got electrocuted, Jason was having a rotten day.”
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I’m of two minds about this book. On the one hand, it’s not Percy Jackson. It wasn’t as funny (I missed the chapter titles!), it wasn’t as tight (I kept wondering: was all 553 pages necessary), it wasn’t as fun. I feel bad for Riordan, having everything being compared back to Percy. It’s just that those books are so good, so clever, so well done, that it’s hard to top them.

And yet.

We’re given a new trio of heroes to root for: Jason, son of Jupiter (aka Zeus), who doesn’t remember anything about where he came from or who he is, and why he ended up with these other guys; Leo, tinkerer, mechanic, builder, and fire-wielder, and he makes nice with a really cool mechanical dragon; and Piper, angst-ridden daughter of a movie star, who has a gift for convincing people to give her things. They’re an unlikely trio, and when they set off to free Hera, of all gods, from an unseen rising force, you wonder how it’s all going to turn out.

I don’t really want to give away much more than that, because, in spite of its length, Riordan has the gift for making you turn pages. You want to know what’s happening, you want to know how the puzzle pieces fit together, and yes, while he doesn’t end with “to be continued” he does give us a nice lead-in to the next book in the series. He keeps you wondering what’s going to happen next, and for that, we’ll give him enormous credit. He’s working his way through Greek mythology, weaving lesser-known stories (though there are a couple of well-known ones as well) through the book. It’s not deep, and yes it’s much of the same sort of clever that Riordan’s known for.

But you know what? It’s fun. And for this, that counts a whole lot.