Authors & Illustrators

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell. St. Martin’s Griffin. 2013. Reviewed from ARC from publisher. The Plot: August, 1986, and Park Sheridan is sitting on the bus, wanting to be left alone. When Eleanor Douglas gets on the bus, the last thing he wants to do is share his seat with her. Ignore her, leave [...]

The Hans Christian Andersen Award shortlist has been revealed; the Christopher Awards names six winners in the Books for Young People category; and Shmoop, a publisher of digital curriculum and test prep, is offering a new SAT math practice tool—Math Shack. All of this and more in this week's News Bites column.

Game by Barry Lyga. Sequel to I Hunt Killers. Little, Brown & Co. 2013. Reviewed from ARC from publisher. The Plot: In I Hunt Killers, Jazz helped capture a serial killer. It was his father, the infamous serial killer Billy Dent, who taught Jazz the ways of killing, not thinking for a moment that Jazz [...]

Whether it’s a class assignment or a novel in verse, poetry expresses our deepest desires and fondest memories. It's National Poetry Month, and the editors at the Junior Library Guild have selected the following new titles to motivate students to voice their own poetic thoughts.

SLJ is giving away 25 author-signed copies of the latest book in the format-bending “Infinity Ring” series (Scholastic). Written by Matt de la Peña, the middle grade novel Curse of the Ancients continues the adventures of Dak, Sera, and Riq, who are on a quest to set history back on course by traveling to different cataclysmic events in time. Leave comment to enter.

In our candid interview with Library Journal Mover & Shaker Lindsey Tomsu, new youth librarian and teen club advisor extraordinaire at La Vista Public Library (NE), she shares with SLJ her top teen book picks, her dealings with Dewey, her inspirations and passions, why teens matter so much, and her views on the future of youth services.

Artist and author Molly Idle talks about her latest book, her life, and her obsession with Prismacolor pencils.

In honor of National Poetry Month, acclaimed poet Naomi Shihab Nye—whose anthology This Same Sky (Simon & Schuster, 1993) continues to be used in both college and fifth grade classrooms—offers us five of her “very favorite lovingly-used poetry collections.”

“The power of books is profound, but power does start in the children’s room. When we connect children with books...we are introducing them to the world,” says Pam Sandlian Smith, director of Colorado’s Anythink Libraries and opening keynote speaker at our first Public Library Leadership Think Tank on Friday. Among the day’s emerging themes: dreaming big, collaboration, innovation, creating community, and believing in the power of kids (and kids’ librarians) to change the world.