Reviews

My Country, ‘Tis of Thee: How One Song Reveals the History of Civil Rights By Claire Rudolf Murphy Illustrated by Bryan Collier Henry Holt and Company (an imprint of Macmillan) $17.99 ISBN: 978-0-8050-8226-5 Ages 7 and up On shelves June 3rd It doesn’t matter how long you’ve worked as a children’s librarian. It doesn’t matter [...]

Teens who went crazy for the "Divergent" series and film adaptation will want the soundtrack on autoplay. Think it would be hard for Shakira to surprise you? Her 10th studio album will. Need help keeping the zombies off your lawn? Sign up for Garden Warfare, the latest in the "Plants vs. Zombies" game franchise.

TOON Books, Francoise Mouly’s innovative hardcover comics imprint for early readers, will expand into the upper grades with TOON Graphics, a new line aimed at readers aged 8 and up. TOON Graphics will include both graphic novels (comics) and books that alternate illustrations and prose. I talked to Mouly about the new line at Publishers [...]

It’s Free Comic Book Day this weekend, and publishers have made sure there are plenty of titles to check out! Boom! Studios has not one but two specials with the 2014 Annual for Adventure Time, and Garfield Pet Force. IDW Publishing debuts their first issue of Dexter’s Laboratory, a new My Little Pony Friendship is [...]

The movement seems to be headquartered on author Kate Messner’s blog. I believe it was sparked by the powerful New York Times opinion pieces–Walter Dean Myers’ Where are the People of Color in Children’s Books and Christopher Myers’ The Apartheid of Children’s Literature. Both of the authors reference a study by the Cooperative Children’s Book [...]

Today we have two books that prompted our reviewer to invoke the name of Indiana Jones–and for good reason. Anne Fortier’s The Lost Sisterhood and James Rollins and Rebecca Cantrell’s Innocent Blood are both rollicking adventure stories, starring University professors, and laden with religious and mythological overtones–precisely the elements that make Steven Spielberg’s archaeologist-adventurer so [...]

Pigsticks and Harold and the Incredible Journey By Alex Milway Candlewick Press ISBN: 9780763666156 $12.99 Grades K-4 In Stores May 27, 2014 *Best New Book* Find it at: Schuler Books | Your Library The word “charming” is used pretty often when talking about books, but what does it really mean? I suppose it’s a moving [...]

Nancy Larrick’s landmark 1965 study on race and children’s books was supposed to have been a wake-up call. Not much has changed.

While National Poetry Month may be officially over, interest in great poems well delivered, never wanes. In this column we look at three very different digital anthologies that include verse. To quote the editors of one collection, we have poets “ancient and modern, fusty and frisky, famous and forgotten,” and to that we might add, a few rising stars.