CMIS Evaluation Fiction Focus

Here they are, the final ten titles – five Australian, five not.

Voting couldn’t be simpler. Head off here.

And the titles? Well in the Gold corner:

• Broken Glass (Adrian Stirling)
• Where the Streets had a Name (Randel Abdel-Fattah)
• Jarvis 24 (David Metzenthen)
• Worldshaker (Richard Harland)
• Everything Beautiful (Simmone Howell)

And vying for the Silver Inky are:

• Exposure (Mal Peet)
• Skim (Mariko and Jillian Tamaki)
• Paper Towns (John Green)
• Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (Sherman Alexie)
• The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins)

If you would like to recall the longlist that these ten titles survived, we blogged it here.

The only rules: Voters must be aged under 20 and they can only vote once. But they can live anywhere in the world. Don’t forget the shelftalkers to get your students started.

Looking forward to the next round of the  twitter wars between the survivor @realjohngreen and the vanquished @maureenjohnson although John just might accept victory gracefully.

Just back from the virtual Inkys longlist announcement. Using Elluminate was a great way to find out which ten titles will be in contention for each of the Golden and Silver Inkys in 2010. Several schools and their students participated and were able to comment in the chat room, although levels of security in some systems prevented many would-be attendees. We tweeted some of the titles, but fingers couldn’t fly fast enough for all. Fortunately the Inside a Dog website was pretty smart in uploading the page.

Here are the finalists.  They will be whittled down to five (oops, three, even harder) in each category early in October in another virtual event.

Golden Inky (for Australian titles)

• Broken Glass (Adrian Stirling)
• Everything Beautiful (Simmone Howell)
• Into White Silence (Anthony Eaton)
• Jarvis 24 (David Metzenthen)
• My Candlelight Novel (Joanne Horniman)
• Screw Loose (Chris Wheat)
• The Beginner’s Guide to Living (Lia Hills)
• The Two Pearls of Wisdom (Alison Goodman)
• Where the Streets had a Name (Randa Abdel-Fattah)
• Worldshaker (Richard Harland)

Silver Inky (International titles)

• Exposure (Mal Peet)
• Girl at Sea (Maureen Johnson)
• If I Stay (Gayle Forman)
• Love, Aubrey (Suzanne La Fleur)
• Paper Towns (John Green)
• Skim (Mariko and Jillian Tamaki)
• Ten Mile River (Paul Griffin)
• The 10PM Question (Kate de Goldi)
• The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian (Sherman Alexie)
• The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins)

Now that lot took longer to type and link than to attend the launch! Strong lists – hard to whittle down.

All you need to know about voting and the awards process is here.

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On Thursday, the longlists for the Inky Awards will be announced in Melbourne. Are you going? We are, even though we are a continent away. Join in the announcement to learn which ten novels have made stage one of the Inky process – five Australian, five international – by following these instructions from Adele, one of the Inky judges. Easy peasy set up with a bit of downloading and testing of settings involved. Bring your students and an interactive whiteboard. It’s all happening at 1.15pm AEST, so that’s 11.15am on this side of the country. And if you are international, here’s a world clock to calculate your time.  That’s Thursday (here in Australia).

The Inkys are a YA-specific award run by Melbourne’s amazing Centre for Youth Literature.

And on Friday, the winners of the 2009 CBCA Awards will at last be known. Although the focus is on winners on Friday, in the long term the other shortlisted titles and the Notable Books (effectively a longlist) are always worth keeping in mind.  These are the last ones standing after hundreds of titles have been considered. The announcement of winners is at 12 noon AEST, so 10am local time. Watch twitter and of course, this space.

People who live in Victoria don’t have much to celebrate at the moment, so to anticipate anything literary is welcome. Especially when it’s the 2009 program from the Centre for Youth Literature.  So many good things are planned that it’s worth at least one interstate trip if you can manage it. Of course many do travel far and wide to attend the Reading Matters Conference and that program is also now available. A reminder about the dates: Main event Friday 29 and Saturday 30 May, with a Youth Day on Thursday 28 May. Don’t leave the booking too late.

Melbourne’s Centre for Youth Literature is offering a great lineup for its 2009 conference, Reading Matters. Details are here but just to whet your appetite, think John Green and M.T. Anderson from the USA, Cathy Cassidy and Mal Peet (UK), Bernard Beckett (NZ) plus many, many great Australian writers for young adults.

Diary date claimer dates are 29 and 30 May (with a Youth Day on 28 May) just as Melbourne is heading into a crisp and lovely winter.

The Reading Matters conference is especially nice as no tough choices have to be made. Everyone shares the two days together, which makes for stimulating conversation during the breaks.

The Inkys are going live. Read all the details on the Read Alert blog.

When:  Tuesday 18 November

Time: 2pm EST (physical location is Melbourne, Australia if you need to check on an international clock)

Where: Anywhere

What a great opportunity for readers to participate using a IWB. But you must register, so check it all out on the blog.

When the longlist for the Inky Awards was announced at the beginning of August, we knew that some titles would eventually have to go.

Well that time has come with the announcement of the six books still in the race – three Australian titles vying for the Golden Inky, three international for the Silver.

Voting, open to readers anywhere in the world aged between 12 and 18,  starts today – either by SMS or by sending an email to the Inside a Dog website.  The guidelines explain the process.

The winners will be announced on 6 November.

Great news. We knew the application had been made but it has now been confirmed that Melbourne has been given the nod by UNESCO to become only the second City of Literature in the world.

Edinburgh received this status in 2004 as part of UNESCO’s Creative Cities Network Program.

It’s wonderful news for the city that had the imagination to develop a Centre for Youth Literature, and it comes just before the start of the Melbourne Writers Festival on Friday.

Jason Steger, from the ABC’s First Tuesday Book Club, tells more in today’s Age.

Hop over to the Inside a Dog website to see the titles of the 20 books that have been named on the long list for the Inky Awards.

The ten Australian and ten overseas contenders will be whittled down to 3 of each on 12 September, and the winner of the Golden Inky (Australian) and Silver Inky (overseas) will be announced on 6 November.

All the guidelines are on the web page but voting is restricted to those aged between 12 and 18 and can be done by SMS or email. Readers worldwide are encouraged to participate.

Such a strong long list presents many opportunities for English teachers and Teacher Librarians to promote wide reading.  All are compelling reads so the selection of the short list will not be easy.

The site also has details of a Creative Reading competition and information for teachers and librarians.

This is the second year of the Inkys.

The Centre for Youth Literature’s website, Inside a Dog, is busy and about to get busier. James Roy has been writer in residence for a week now, and his blog is inviting students to comment on a variety of thoughts, including their favourite animal book. James will be around for a little longer on the site, so point your readers in his direction.  While they are there, they could try writing a book review in haiku.

And the 2008 Inky Awards are being launched tomorrow. Now in their second year, these awards are looking for the teenage vote. Last year’s winners will be there -  Simmone Howell (Notes from the Teenage Underground) in person and John Green (Looking for Alaska) via YouTube.

We’ll let you know the lists as soon as they are announced, but you can also subscribe to Read Alert, the blog from CYC to keep informed.