Stardines Swim High Across the Sky and Other Poems By Jack Prelutsky Illustrated by Carin Berger Greenwillow Books (an imprint of Harper Collins) $16.99 ISBN: 978-0-06-201464-1 Ages 4-8 On shelves February 26th. To non-children’s librarians the statistics are baffling. Your average poetry book isn’t exactly a circ buster. It sits on the shelf for months [...]
Review of the Day: Stardines Swim High Across the Sky and Other Poems by Jack Prelutsky
By on February 1, 2013
Weekly Reviews: Nonfiction for Browsing
By on January 30, 2013
Teen behavior in libraries includes a lot of browsing. I have two different display spaces in my small high school library. Fortunately, one of them is right in front of my desk, so I often get the chance to watch students check out the latest books (surreptitiously, lest I scare them away!). Some will just [...]
Weekly Reviews: Francesca Lia Block and Ursula K. Le Guin
By on January 9, 2013
Today we feature new books by two authors well-known among teen readers. With Francesca Lia Block’s return to adult fiction we have, as Jamie says in her review, a perfect example of the New Adult category. In an Interview Magazine piece, Block was asked about the themes in this book, “In The Elementals, I explore the [...]
Pick of the Day: The Day Carl Sandburg Died (DVD)
By on December 4, 2012 Leave a Comment
The Day Carl Sandburg Died. DVD. 84 min. Prod. by Bonesteel Films. Dist. by PBS Dist. 2012. ISBN 978-1-60883-701-4. $24.99.
Gr 8 Up–Carl Sandburg, one of the most celebrated American poets of the 20th century, lived an incredibly colorful life which was reflected in his work. Born into an indigent family of Swedish immigrants in western Illinois, Sandburg initially held a series of manual labor jobs. Later he became a union activist, a social orator, and even a self-proclaimed anarchist. His [...]
Pick of the Day: Shiver Me Timbers!: Pirate Poems & Paintings
By on August 29, 2012 Leave a Comment
FLORIAN, Douglas. Shiver Me Timbers!: Pirate Poems & Paintings. illus. by Robert Neubecker. 32p. CIP. S & S/Beach Lane Bks. Aug. 2012. Tr $16.99. ISBN 978-1-4424-1321-4; ebook $12.99. ISBN 978-1-4424-5712-6. LC 2010048963.
Gr 2-5–From the smiling, rollicking kids on the cover laying claim to a beach full of treasure to the shipload of fierce, sneering, plundering, cutlass-waving, face-making buccaneers, boastful of their scurrilous behavior, these pirates are a motley group. In 19 poems, they teach “Pirate Patter” and punishment and describe some [...]
An Unbiased Plug for My Mother
By on August 22, 2012
Okay. That’s an outright lie, I suppose. Who can be unbiased about their mom? Particularly when their mom writes awesome poetry? Particularly particularly when she has been published by The University of Nebraska Press and her book is out on shelves now.
You can’t trust me (obviously). So I’ll just casually put these quotes from major [...]
