The children’s book awards now have a name and a web site: the Cybils. Now, head on over and get to nominatin’. And if you want to be considered for a non-fiction picture book committee — either to narrow down the nominations, or to select the winner — let me know right here in the comments.

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I enjoyed a flashback to my youth yesterday through a couple of bedtime chapters of Tales of a Fourth-Grade Nothing, which I hadn’t read in 25 years. (I read sequel Superfudge aloud to my own fourth-grade class, so school visits should be a cinch for me.) But as much as I enjoyed it, 7-year-old S enjoyed it more, devouring the whole thing and getting all excited when I told him there were other Fudge books. I’m so glad I thought to bring home Tales while S, like Peter Hatcher, still has a 2 1/2-year-old brother.

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I got some useful and encouraging feedback on my new manuscript, SVT, from my critique group on Saturday. I’ve got another set of eyes looking at it, and then I’ll figure out my next move, but I’m still very much in love with it.

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SVT must have met my need to get silly and make stuff up, because I’ve now been drawn far deeper into JR, the topic I’d been considering for my next picture book biography. Before I really started reading up on the subject, I’d thought it was something I might want to write about, eventually; now, I feel like it’s something I have to write about, now.

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Finally, if you’ve always wondered what a sikyifriykyiwa sounds like, wonder no more. Yesterday, I learned of Wesleyan University’s Virtual Instrument Museum, which is packed with sample sounds and videos of chordophones, aerophones, membranophones, and idiophones. “Idiophones?” Who knew?