Some of the SLJ editors at last year’s Best Books Twitter Party. Note the copious amounts of pizza.
Each fall, the SLJ editors and contributors look back over the entire publishing year, painstakingly discussing and debating the merits of notable and noteworthy books, DVDs, audiobooks, apps, and more. Featured in the December issue, the Best Books and Top 10 lists represent the cream of the crop of materials for children and teens published or produced in the year. In the past, the editors (myself, Luann Toth, Shelley Diaz, Mahnaz Dar, and Daryl Grabarek) would take to social media to host a Best Books Twitter Party in late November, announcing the selected titles one at a time in challenging bursts of 140 characters. This year, in addition to Twitter announcements using the hashtag #SLJBest2015, we will be hosting a live broadcast via Google Hangout and YouTube on Monday, November 23 at 6pm ET.
The Best Books list is divided into four major categories: picture books, middle grade, YA, and nonfiction. SLJ publishes over 5,000 book reviews each year, all of them written by librarians. In order to narrow down the titles to a workable long list, we first look at every book that received an SLJ star. From that group, each editor then nominates anywhere from 20 to 30 titles for further evaluation and debate. After a first round of intensive discussion, we vote. Then we take some time to think about our selections and make sure we didn’t miss any titles published late in the year. After some time has passed, we make like George Romero and nominate additional titles for the Zombie Round. These can be books that just published, titles that we somehow overlooked in the earlier nomination round, or even titles that have already been voted off—hence the reference to the Undead. The full list—including the Zombies—are evaluated again and hotly debated in one final round of discussion that usually lasts a full day. When everyone feels that each title has been thoroughly examined and all pros and cons explored, the voting begins. While there is no minimum or maximum number of titles required for the annual Best Books list, we generally try to stay somewhere in the range of 50 to 70 titles in total. Some years reveal strength or trends in certain areas (2014 saw a number of strong picture book biographies, for instance).
Meanwhile, our multimedia editors and regular contributors have quite a task—narrowing down hundreds of DVDs, audiobooks, apps, and more into Top 10 lists. Each Top 10 list this year will be celebrated with a Twitter chat during the week of November 16, all culminating in the live broadcast of the Best Books list and the downloadable PDF of all the Best 2015 selections on November 23. Kent Turner, DVD editor, and Stephanie Klose, audio editor, reveal their respective top picks via Twitter on Wednesday, November 18 at 4pm ET. Regular SLJ contributors and bloggers also help curate the best of the best each year; on Thursday, November 19 at 3pm on Twitter, columnist Mark Flowers presents the Best Adult Books 4 Teens. Keeping the excitement high, on Friday, November 20, editor Shelley Diaz presents the Top 10 Latin@ Books, the Top 10 Graphic Novels, selected by the Good Comics for Kids bloggers are revealed, and editor Daryl Grabarek unveils the Top 10 Apps. All of the Twitter chats can be followed using the hashtag #SLJBest2015 or by following @sljournal.
Users of Google Plus can watch and participate in the live Best Books broadcast on November 23; anyone can watch the livestream via YouTube. SLJ readers and librarians are encouraged to join in by tweeting at the editors, letting us know what you think of our selections, and yes…even telling us what we missed or got wrong!