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

Lynn: Marcus Jordan, star quarterback of his previous team, is the new guy in town. To make things worse, the local football team was undefeated last year and no one sees any reason to change the starting line-up. Marcus makes the team but resigns himself to working hard and riding the bench for the year. [...]

Cindy: This time of year makes me really miss my public library days. Halloween storytimes were so much fun. Sally Walker’s new Halloween pour-quoi tale, Druscilla’s Halloween (Carolrhoda, 2009) offers an explanation for how witches came to ride brooms. Aging Druscilla can no longer quietly sneak up on children by tiptoe to scare them–her knees [...]

Lynn: When PBS aired The National Parks: America’s Best Idea in September I was glued to the television. I had my popcorn and I sat for six glorious nights marveling at what I was seeing and hearing. In true librarian fashion, I had checked out a copy of the accompanying book ahead of time. I [...]

Cindy: Over at 100 Scope Notes, cover controversies are unveiled on a regular basis. Featured are book covers that pose a striking resemblance to one another. I enjoy those features and just found a set of my own: Both have a gold skeleton key placed below the the title, both feature their same keys on [...]

Lynn: I’m convinced that our house has a sign clearly visible to all animal species that says, “Hopeless sucker lives here.” A mind-boggling array of creatures have wandered in over the years and many of them stayed. So with that and the fact that one of my sons served in Iraq, I knew I might [...]

Lynn: There have been many outstanding books about the Dust Bowl but Marrin’s Years of Dust: The Story of the Dust Bowl (Penguin/Dutton, 2009) is a book that belongs in every public and school library in this country. Even in this year of extraordinary nonfiction, Marrin’s new book stands out with its exemplary writing. Marrin, [...]

Cindy: Can an author really scare me in 30 seconds or less? The answer is yes when it is Margaret Atwood or Jack Gantos or M. T. Anderson or Art Slade. Yikes! Each story, poem, or graphic story in this slim volume can be read in less than half a minute. Lynn brought Half-Minute Horrors [...]

Lynn: This quiet little masterpiece is one of my favorite books this year. When the Whistle Blows (Penguin/Philomel 2009) may be a debut novel but Slayton writes with a polished skill that many a veteran author would envy. The novel has an interesting construction – seven complete short stories that build upon each other, adding [...]

Cindy: The Black Book of Colors (Groundwood, 2008) is a gem of a book that flew under the radar last year even though it garnered four starred reviews and a prize at the 2007 Bologna Children’s Book Fair. How does someone who can’t see comprehend colors? Through his other senses of touch, smell, sound, and [...]

Lynn: Kristin Cashore is a gifted storyteller – one of those remarkable writers who spin a web of words that wraps around readers, capturing them completely with a tale. I’d wager my classic sf collection that every reader coming to the end of the first book, Graceling (Penguin/Dial, 2008), immediately asked when the second volume [...]