News & Features

Inquiry and nonfiction are closely related and books that explore the work of scientists can be ideal mentor texts as students develop skills that are essential for learning.

Permanent Record by Leslie Stella. Amazon Children’s Publishing. 2013. Reviewed from ARC from publisher. The Plot: Bud Hess is starting a new school: Magnificat Academy. The official story is to give him a better education than he was getting in public school. The real story is a bit more complicated. It has to do with [...]

For many teens, prom night is the biggest night of their high school lives. There are so many things to think about—what to wear, who to ask, and how it’s all going to fit on a budget. Some things (like who’ll make their entrance in a pink Hummer limo or who’ll be elected prom queen andThe Prom Book king) can’t be planned for, but for everything else, there’s The Prom Book: The Only Guide You’ll Ever Need (Zest Books, distributed by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $16.99 paperback; 9781936976287).

Karyn Silverman, half of the genius behind Some Day My Printz Will Come, joins us to write about the last, lone Alex Award Winner yet to be covered here on AB4T. Take it away, Karyn! Angela and Mark have been covered all of the Alex winners at this point except one. And because Angela saw me [...]

As part the library’s efforts to raise awareness about poetry leading up to National Poetry Month in April, NYPL is encouraging aspiring poets to “follow @NYPL on Twitter, and submit three poetic Tweets in English as public posts on your Twitter stream between March 1 and 10, 2013.”

American and Japanese baseball compared

On January 11, a young computer programmer and internet activist named Aaron Swartz was found dead of an apparent suicide.  For those not familiar with him, Swartz, just 26 at his death, was involved in a huge array of groundbreaking information tools, such as RSS (which he helped design), Reddit, the Open Library, and the [...]

For those seeking informational books for reluctant independent readers (boys or girls), the editors at Junior Library Guild have a variety of picks, from sports and pirates, to body parts and dangerous creatures.

Although Jarrett J. Krosoczka’s immensely popular "Lunch Lady" series of graphic novels will come to an end this year, the women and men who work in our nation’s school cafeterias will not be forgotten. Krosoczka recently announced that May 3 will now be known as “School Lunch Superhero Day,” a day for kids to show their appreciation for all of their cafeteria workers.