The world's largest reviewer of books, multimedia, and technology for children and teens
Four favorite YA authors―Holly Black, Chris Crutcher, Nancy Farmer, and Neal Shusterman―have new titles out, and fans will be clamoring for them. From a study room that’s run like Las Vegas to the cruise of a lifetime gone bad, you’ll find suspense, humor, horror, and thrills in this selection from the editors at Junior Library Guild.
Using a question/answer format, Goldstone explains the concepts of possibility, impossibility, probability, improbability, and certainty.
Both Luke Bryan and The Civil Wars are award-winning country western artists. After all, what’s not to like about an album titled Crash My Party? But a mid-tour breakup has fans wondering if The Civil Wars will ever make another album. SLJ’s teen reviewers weigh in.
The September Multimedia Review section features nearly70 reviews of DVDs, audiobooks, and children’s music CDs. Among the eight starred reviews are Constitution USA with Peter Sagal, a DVD that examines the document’s historical and contemporary contexts, and Nelson Mandela, Kadir Nelson’s evocative biography for elementary grade students.
Constitution USA with Peter Sagal broadly examines our Constitution in both historical and contemporary contexts in a manner that will transfix viewers. Check out the starred review.
Three new memoirs make the most of teen-friendly subject matter. First, a celebrity memoir by Don Ed Hardy, the man who helped bring tattoo art into the mainstream. Hardy knew from the age of 10, when he was using colored pencils to give his friends “tattoos,” what he wanted to do with his life. He [...]
Gina Damico wraps up her Croak series in “cracktastic” style with the fall release of Rogue. If you loved Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell, it’s a good bet you’ll be smitten with Fangirl, “written by a writer writing about a writer writing.” The question posed in After Eden, from Helen Douglas, circles around when it is or isn’t right to keep a secret, especially when a loyal friend and a whole planet depend on it.
Poetry and nature feature strongly in our selections this month, perhaps because we’ve been spending more time outdoors of late?
Autumn shapes (Chernesky), a new version of “The Little Red Hen” (Finch), and a “Stella and Sam” story (Gay)
Some spooky tales and a story about seafaring cats
In a new series, sleuthing by teen heroines related to Sherlock Holmes and Bram Stoker (Gleason).
Check out John Lewis and Andrew Aydin’s March
An Islamic Snow White.
Flora, a pig, dreams of going to Antarctica and becoming a sled pig.
About words and writing.
In Janie Face to Face, Caroline B. Cooney wraps up her popular thriller romance series that debuted more than 20 years ago about a young girl who discovers her face on a milk carton, setting in motion a series of rollercoaster events that affected many lives. Read the review of the audiobook narrated by Alyssa Bresnahan.
For those of you who have been sitting under a shady tree or on a beach these past two months—and we hope that’s most of you—we’re offering a summary of the app reviews published over the summer. The list includes picture books, poetry, music, a reference guide or two, and some beloved characters and timeless stories. These are titles you want to load onto your school devices ASAP.
In Orphan Train Rider: One Boy’s True Story, Andrea Warren tells about the amazing and often tragic westward journey of more than 200,000 children between 1854 and 1930 in search of families. Be sure to read the review of the audiobook narrated by Laura Hicks.
Today we look at three historical novels about very strange families. Taking things chronologically, first up is Sarah Dunant’s Blood & Beauty, about the very real, and very twisted Borgias of Renaissance Italy. Wikipedia lists among their crimes “adultery, simony, theft, bribery, and murder (especially by arsenic poisoning).” I quite like that parenthetical at the [...]
