Need suggestions for Cybils nominations? Leila Roy at Bookshelves of Doom has some links for you. You have today and tomorrow to get those favorites nominated.

Purple Horse Press is re-publishing a couple of classic Kate Seredy books that have been out of print for quite a while:
A Tree for Peter is a Christmas story, and you can order now to get it in time for a Christmas read aloud with your family.
The Chestry Oak is a World War II story about Prince Michael of Hungary and his adventures in Nazi-occupied Hungary. This classic story will be available in January.

Zilpha Keatley Snyder, author of over forty fiction books for young people, died on October 8th in San Francisco. Three of Snyder’s books were named Newbery Honor books: The Egypt Game, The Headless Cupid and The Witches of Worm. Her penultimate book, William S. and the Great Escape was enjoyed and reviewed here at Semicolon.

” . . . stories are things that have fascinated me since I was a very young child when, I am told, I wept bitterly when my mother’s nightly reading brought us to the end of a given book–Heidi, Peter Pan, whatever. Not because it was a sad ending, but because it was done. The story was over.”

Finalists for the 2014 National Book Award include the following that I plan to add to my TBR list:

Marilynne Robinson’s new book, Lila, which Eldest Daughter has already purchased and offered to loan to me. I’ll be reading it just as soon as I make it through the Cybils season, or maybe as a break from all the wonderful middle grade speculative fiction that is feeding my reading habit these days.

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, a WWII novel that sounds interesting.

Second Childhood by Fanny Howe, a book of poetry that might actually interest me.

And in the category of Young People’s Literature: Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson, Noggin by John Corey Whaley, The Port Chicago 50 by Steve Sheinkin, Revolution by Deborah Wiles, and Threatened by Eliot Shrefer. I’ve only read the nonfiction book by Sheinkin, but the others sound worthwhile and fun—again when Cybils is over. I predict Brown Girl Dreaming wins the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature.