Booklist Online: More than 130,000 book reviews for librarians, book groups, and book lovers - from the trusted experts at the American Library Association

Cindy: It’s no small feat to take the events of the Holocaust, Anne Frank’s life and diary, and Wiesenthal’s lifelong work as a Nazi War Crime hunter and present them in 40 pages in a form accessible to elementary students. In the capable hands of Rubin, though, The Anne Frank Case (Holiday House, 2009) does [...]

Lynn: We have a problem. It’s a totally great problem but there definitely are some down-sides to it. We have books, books, books stacked EVERYWHERE! You can hardly walk through my office. It all started with serving on YALSA committees, increased when we started reviewing for Booklist and has gotten completely out of hand now [...]

Lynn: Our focus group is starting to throw their weight around. Ever since we read The Sleepy Little Alphabet (Random/Knopf, June 2009) in galley several months ago, they’ve been asking if we have written about it yet. Explaining that we like to blog books closer to the publication didn’t impress them. They adored this book [...]

Lynn: One of the best things about reading is learning cool facts to share. Secret Subway (National Geographic, May 2009) is packed with interesting facts and fascinating stories that will enthrall readers – teens and adults. How can you not love a book that shares the story of how the first subway was dug in [...]

Cindy: There’s a girl licking chocolate frosting (or Nutella spread) off her finger on the cover. That’s all I need to pick up The Sweet Life of Stella Madison (Random/Delacorte, July 2009). Actually, one of our BBYA teen readers reviewed this at book club and it was her comments that spurred me to read it. [...]

Lynn: It’s not every fourteen-year-old girl who can successfully work as a Perditorian (finder of lost things) on her own in the teeming dangerous streets of London. Enola Holmes is no ordinary girl and she is doing quite nicely, thank you, solving cases that baffle even her famous brothers. Before she disappeared, Enola’s eccentric mother [...]

Cindy: Johannes Vermeer was a mysterious 17th century Dutch painter with only 34-36 existing paintings and very little known about his life and work. His painting, The Girl with the Pearl Earring, became the subject of a lauded adult novel by Tracy Chevalier. In The Vermeer Interviews (Millbrook, 2009), Bob Raczka attempts to ferret out [...]

Lynn: We live on the Lake Michigan shore where winter starts in October, hangs on through April and where feet and feet of snow pile up. Our summers may be short but they are glorious! So I often find myself shopping for a new bathing suit, staring horrified at pale wobbly parts of my anatomy [...]

Cindy: I’ve wanted to write about this book all spring, but kept rereading it and finding new treasures so I hadn’t handed it over to Lynn. Finally, the bright orioles feeding on my oranges on my deck rails prompted me to get moving on sharing this book. The Cuckoo’s Haiku (Candlewick, 2009) is a tribute [...]

Lynn: Kenneth Oppel does many things well in his writing but he especially knows how to create nail-biting cling-to-your-seat action scenes. Starclimber (Harper/EOS, 2000) does that right from the first page when pilot-in-training Matt Cruse discovers a ticking time bomb on board his ship. The first two books in this series, Airborn and Skybreaker introduced [...]