News & Features

Sen. Bill Holtzclaw is calling upon state educators to ban The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison’s first novel, which is used in conjunction with the Common Core standards. Holtzclaw finds its language and depiction of incest and child molestation objectionable and would support removal from school libraries shelves.

In time for the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington, John Lewis—former chairman of SNCC and now Congressman—collaborated with his comics-obsessed staffer Andrew Aydin and veteran graphic novelist Nate Powell on a powerful new graphic novel memoir, March.

Sesame Street's "Maria," Sonia Manzano, received top honors in the 2013 Americas Award for Children’s and Young Adult Literature for her The Revolution of Evelyn Serrano. Celebrate International Dot Day with its creator, author/illustrator Peter H. Reynolds, at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, MA, on September 15.

What could your library do with gigabit broadband? If you don’t have a list of innovative ways to use an Internet connection 10 or 100 times faster than the current norm, start making it now.

Leonard Peacock has big plans for his 18th birthday....to kill Asher Beal and then commit suicide....This is a difficult, yet powerful, book. Quick’s use of flashbacks, internal dialogue, and interpersonal communication is brilliant.

It is hard to believe that 15 years ago muggle and quidditch didn’t exist in our vocabulary. But thanks to J. K. Rowling, the words are now found in the Oxford English Dictionary—and have become a permanent part of our culture. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is just one of several now-classic books marking anniversaries in 2013 with celebrations and special editions.

Can a public library serve both school children and its other patrons at the same time? That question is being put to the test in Chicago this week as the Back of the Yards Library—a public branch meant to serve as a school library for the 9–12 grade students attending the new Back of the Yards High School next door—opens its doors.

The following shelf-worthy additions selected by the editors of Junior Library Guild offer readers hard-to-put-down follow-ups by Newbery-winning and NY Times-bestselling authors. From the conclusion of Gennifer Choldenko's "Al Capone" series and the latest title in Margaret Peterson Haddix's "The Missing" books, these choices will be a slam dunk for kids and librarians.

With another school year on the horizon, the focus of August’s Listen In column is on the relationships that children and teens make—with other kids and with adults—to help them navigate the stormy waters of growing up. The ten audiobooks featured are excellent for group listening and for generating discussions about what’s happening to the young people in the stories, from the poignant depiction of friendship in The Other Side to the real drama wrought by abuse in Eleanor and Park.