As my friend Monica blogged yesterday at Educating Alice, we are waiting for the official announcements of the 2011 Battle of the Kids’ Books. (Last year’s matches and decisions are still available for interested readers.) The 16 contenders from 2010 have been sitting behind the curtain for more than a month now and the judges are all confirmed. The books are being delivered to the judges. They will be read, and considered carefully. And very soon, the decisions will come into our inboxes. The excitement mounts on our end, eagerly waiting to share all these with you eventually!
Even though we’ve had to leave many many beloved 2010 books off of the finalists list, Monica (Edinger,) Jonathan (Hunt,) and I (Roxanne Feldman) also had the pleasure and freedom of considering a wide range of titles: genre-wise and age-wise, especially. You will see graphic novels, speculative fictions, nonfiction titles, and realistic fictions, for both younger and older readers and originally published in America and overseas. In our minds, they were and are all winners already, even though many of them did not make it on the recent Youth Literature Awards slate.
Hope you will seek out, buy, borrow, and read all of them and join in on the action by voting and by posting your comments, and by encouraging your young readers to do the same!
Fairrosa Cyber Library 
I can’t wait! I hope they will announce the titles soon, so I can get more of them read before the Battle Begins.
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We are hoping to announce it within the week now… what do you think should make to the Arena?
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I would love to see Keeper, The Cardturner, Finnikin of the Rock, Incarceron, The Woods Runner, After The Kiss, Happyface, The Prince of Mist, Fever Crumb, Last Summer of the Death Warriors, The Sky is Everywhere, I am Number Four (dont care about controversy), The Search for Wondla, The Familiars, Stuck on Earth, Origami Yoda, Mercury, Black Hole Sun, Revolution, Forge and The Things A Brother Knows.
I know that’s more than 16 but they were all my faves!
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Wow… we only got TWO out of your list… Which just shows that there are so many good books to choose from each year! Several of your favs are ours, too.
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