On CYBILS and Virtual Book Tours
By Ilene S. Goldman
In the past few months, the children’s literature blogging community has led the blogging world in creating community through cross-fertilization and cutting edge events. First, a lively discussion between Kidslit bloggers culminated in the creation of the first online award for children’s literature, the CYBILS, Children’s and YA Bloggers’ Literary Awards. Second, novelist Lisa Graff kicked off the first-ever (as far as I know) virtual book tour with her seven day whirlwind around the Kidlitosphere.
These events demonstrate the dynamism of the blogging community. To experience and join this network, start with CYBIL Judge Elizabeth Bird’s Fuse#8 – and not just because her Feb. 10th entry is entitled “Captain Underpants and the Plot of the Wicked Wikipedia” and she thinks Brian Selznick is the nicest guy in the world (he is.). Bird works in the Donnell Central Children’s Room of the New York Public Library. Her blog offers book reviews, author and illustrator interviews, perspectives on reading with children, dialogues with other bloggers and more. Her list of links to other blogs – reviewers, authors, illustrators, publishers, editors – is enough to keep you busy for days. While you’re working on your own manuscripts (or taking a break by blogging!), Bird will update you on news about book banning, parental complaints about library books (click here for my favorite) and publication parties. She is frequently in contact with other bloggers and writes about their blogs, providing a strong anchor in our growing web.
Next, join Lisa Graff as she promotes The Thing About Georgie. During her virtual book tour, she’ll “be hitting up a new blog every day, where [her] lovely hosts have whipped up a series of thoughtful and oft-hilarious questions for [her] to answer.” Starting at The Longstockings (of which she is one), she’ll continue to Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, Big A, little a, bildungsroman, MotherReader, and Gothamist. Graff’s tour will take you to some of the biggest Kidslit blogs and a cool blog about NYC (check out Chicagoist if you want more on our fair city). In support of the tour, HarperCollins is giving out free copies of the book – details will be posted on the blogs. The tour demonstrates not only the strength of the Kidslitosphere community but also its importance in the eyes of the publishing world. HarperCollins recognizes the virtual book tour as a low-cost way to reach a wide audience without requiring Graff to leave her crazy cat at home.
The Kidslitosphere grows, like my toddler, exponentially every month. Moreover, it encapsulates the wild evolution of online communities. When I first wrote about online communities in 2000, communities that formed via the Internet were static and limited. Blogs didn’t exist. Rather, people had webpages onto which they might load their thoughts and photos. But these pages were not expected to change daily and, for the most part, did not attract large daily audiences. Traditionally, we found like-minded people via e-mail lists, bulletin boards and discussion boards, or forums. We were largely anonymous participants with no expectation of in-person encounters.
Similar communication still exists, as evidenced by our very active SCBWI-IL ListServ. Today, however, we learn about these communities via our existing “RL” (real life) community – our memberships, professional associations and friends. In many cases, we don’t want complete anonymity. Rather, we identify ourselves as someone who belongs, who has the knowledge, interest and engagement level to be a member. Everyone who participates in the SCBWI-IL message board, for example, has identified him or herself as having a vested interest in children’s literature. Often, we use our message board to arrange in-person meetings to further our community-building, networking and mutual support.
Blogs, in contrast, form communities that do not have a defined membership or audience, are public and can grow exponentially. Some blogs attract an audience that the blogger never imagined possible and a kind of celebrity ensues. (See footnote below.) Even more fascinating, because bloggers seem to comprise the largest part of the blog audience, blogs which began as a singular person’s ruminations on a subject frequently begin to comment on and begin discourse with other blogs. Bloggers reading and responding to each other create a networked, webbed community. The result: the group effort to create the CYBILS and a reliable audience to host and attend a virtual book tour.
Chicago writer and blogger Ilene S. Goldman is the author of many articles for grown ups on film and television. She reviews children’s books for The Edge of the Forest and Children’s Literature. She first rocketed into the online universe of kids’ literature while researching authors for her reviews. Ilene is working on a picture book that came to her in a dream. Learn about Ilene’s adventures parenting a medically complex but thoroughly cute toddler at Charlotte’s Journey Home. E-mail her at isg_124@yahoo.com.
Footnote: My favorite examples, while not children’s literature blogs, are Profgrrrrl, Playing School Irreverently and Vegan Lunchbox. For writers, Vegan Lunchbox provides an especially powerful example – Jennifershmoo’s year of documenting the vegan lunches she packed for her son created a demand for a self-published cookbook that is now in its second printing.
