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Diego Rivera: An Artist for the People By Susan Goldman Rubin Abrams Books for Young Readers $21.95 ISBN: 978-0-8109-8411-0 Ages 10 and up On shelves now National Hispanic Heritage Month runs from September 15th to October 15th. How many folks could tell you that off the top of their heads? Meanwhile, few awards are specifically [...]
Your House is on Fire, Your Children All Gone by Stefan Kiesbye. Penguin Books. 2012. Personal copy. Vacation reads, a series of adult books reviewed before holidays for your vacation reading. The Plot: Christian has returned home, returned from the United States to Germany, to a place that is no longer the dark, small town [...]
Reality Ali by Christine Marciniak. Zumaya Thresholds, 2012. Personal copy. From the publisher’s website: “The only thing real about reality TV is the camera. “Fourteen-year-old Ali Caldwell’s father keeps her privacy so secure none of the kids at boarding school believe she has a movie star for a mom. Sick of hiding in the wings, [...]
It’s Monday, Mrs. Jolly Bones! By Warren Hanson Illustrated by Tricia Tusa Beach Lane Books (an imprint of Simon & Schuster) $16.99 ISBN: 978-1-4424-1229-3 Ages 4-7 On shelves March 19th Older children are not big fans of reading about middle-aged adults. That’s just obvious. Unless that adult is a furry woodland creature, of course. Then [...]
Ask the Passengers by A.S. King. Little, Brown. 2012. Reviewed from ARC from publisher. The Plot: Astrid lives in a small town where everyone knows, or thinks they know, everyone’s business. Everyone judges. So Astrid keeps some things to herself: like that her father is smoking pot. Like how she and her younger sister Ellis are [...]
You wouldn’t think a story about an ancient Japanese game that consists of placing stones on a board would be very exciting. But in the case of Hikaru no Go, you would be very wrong. The writer-artist team of Yumi Hotta and Takeshi Obata created a series of well developed characters and games filled with [...]
Open This Little Book By Jesse Klausmeier Illustrated by Suzy Lee Chronicle Books ISBN: 9780811867832 $16.99 Grades PreK-2 In Stores Find it at: Schuler Books | Your Library Some books, you just have to see. When a title like the inventive Open This Little Book arrives, a description alone doesn’t do it much justice. But [...]
And haters gonna hate. Conversation online (and by conversation I include both articles and posts as well as social media) can be tricky. We’ve all seen “someone being wrong,” and snark, and hurt feelings, and “that’s not what I said” and “haters gonna hate.” It’s tricky and it’s complex. I know I’ve written things that [...]
Check out SLJ’s more than 100 reviews for preschool through grade 4.
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 [...]
Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made By Stephan Pastis Candlewick Press $14.99 ISBN: 978-0-7636-6050-5 Ages 9-12 On shelves February 26th Call it the attack of the syndicated cartoonists. For whatever reason, in the year 2013 we are seeing droves of escapees from the comic strip pages leaping from the burning remains of the newspaper industry into [...]
Benny and Penny in Lights Out! by Geoffrey Hayes Toon Books/Candlewick Press 978-1-935179-20-7, 32 pp. $12.95 Toon Books once again brings us the adventures of Benny and his little sister Penny in Lights Out! It’s a story all too familiar with parents: little sister Penny is getting ready for bed—she’s brushed her teeth and getting [...]
Salvatore Vol. 1: Transports of Love By Nicolas De Crécy NBM The title character in French cartoonist Nicolas De Crécy’s Salvatore is a little dog who is also a fantastic auto mechanic. That is not all that extraordinary a fact in the world of De Crécy’s meandering romantic adventure comedy, as its a world populated almost exclusively with [...]
About a year and a half ago, I was walking through the exhibit hall at Book Expo America and noticed a publisher I wasn’t all that familiar with and a title that had just become the hottest thing in my middle school library. I’m talking about Andrews McMeel Publishing. The series was Big Nate, the [...]
Flora and the Flamingo By Molly Idle Chronicle Books $16.99 ISBN: 978-1-4521-1006-6 Ages 3-7 On shelves February 3rd Did you know that flamingos are pink because of their diet of plankton? Did you know that the flamingo is the national bird of the Bahamas? And did you know that when it comes to a pas [...]
The YALSA’s Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults is one of two awards where YALSA announces a list of finalists, and then announces the winner in January. Edited to add: the Award went to Bomb by Steve Sheinkin. This year’s committee released it’s shortlist in December. Here are the titles, from YALSA’s the Hub: Titanic: [...]
This past December, YALSA announced the shortlist for the William C. Morris YA Debut Award. Edited to add: The Award went to Seraphina by Rachel Hartman! You can get more information on the Morris Award at the YALSA website. I’ve had the chance to read and review all the books, and let me say, it’s going to [...]
Owly & Wormy: Bright Lights and Starry Nights By Andy Runton Atheneum Books Andy Runton’s Owly and Wormy have returned for a second outing in their still rather new-ish format. After years of publishing wordless graphic novels starring his silent, spherical owl character with Top Shelf Productions, cartoonist Runton elevated sidekick Wormy to co-star status and [...]
