Reviews+

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz. Simon & Schuster BFYR. 2012. Copy from library. Printz Honor Book. The Plot: Summer, 1987. Angel Aristotle “Ari” Mendoza is fifteen, and it’s the start of another lonely, hot summer in El Paso. Bored, he goes to the local swimming even though [...]

The nominees for the 2013 Teens’ Top Ten have just been announced by the Young Adult Library Services Association. Kids Read Now combats summer slide with a summer reading program focusing on children in first through third grades. Channel One News is expanding its digital distribution so that its education content can be accessed inside and outside the classroom. Chronicle Books celebrates its 25 years in children's publishing with a tween and teen book giveaway, with entries due July 3. A school librarian at Hitchin Boys’ School in the UK has discovered a poem incorrectly attributed to William Blake.

A survey of outstanding nonfiction titles about ocean life and food chains and the challenging science of marine exploration.

from graphic novel guest blogger, Francisca Goldsmith: What’s So Funny about Parody? Artful parody, as the American journal The Onion shows readers again and again, makes us laugh for a couple of reasons: often, the parody presents a situation that is farcical on its face, and it also tickles our brains with the surprise of [...]

Batman/Superman #1 Written by Greg Pak, drawn by Jae Lee and Ben Oliver DC Comics, $3.99 Rated T, for readers 12 and up It’s been nearly two years since DC Comics canceled their Superman/Batman team-up title (along with the rest of their line, in order to introduce the new “New 52″ universe), but this week [...]

This is an offbeat story-within-a-story about an alien who collects abandoned toys.

A flashback to what I was reviewing in June 2006: Poetry Friday: The Geography of Girlhood by Kirsten Smith. From my review: “Penny is the understudy in the school play and when her big moment comes — they end up cancelling the play. When she gets her first kiss — she faints.But it’s also serious, [...]

Colorado Libraries for Early Literacy (CLEL), an advisory group to the Colorado State Library, is launching the Bell Picture Book Awards, with the first honorees set to be announced on February 5, 2014. The program is designed to celebrate books that foster adult-child engagement around the early literacy practices of read, write, sing, talk, and play.

The audiobook version of Ann Bausum’s Marching to the Mountaintop, which explores the connection between the 1968 Memphis sanitation strike and Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, would be a great resource for students studying the Civil Rights Movement.