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Cindy and Lynn: We’re home from ALA’s 2010 Annual Conference laden with books and new ideas and are ready to return you to our regularly scheduled blog posts tomorrow. The exhibit halls are always fun for us, and usually worth a good photo op. A few years ago we captured Lynn posing with Iron Man, [...]

Cindy and Lynn: #ALA10. Bookends may be slow to blog during the next few hectic days of ALA’s 2010 Annual Conference in Washington, D.C. It’s not for lack of material or Wi-Fi access, but time. We are soaking up every bit of information (and FUN!) that we can and by the time we drop into [...]

Cindy: “Left is clear/Right is clear. The streets are not safe here.” Ajani and his friends keep a careful eye out for bullies who threaten their football game, but the game must go on in this moving picture book, Goal! (Candlewick, 2010). The boys are thrilled with Ajani’s new leather federation-size ball that he earned [...]

Lynn: Animals have always been a big part of my life and that has also meant I love to read about animals almost as much I like being around them. There wasn’t any such thing as YA literature when I was a young teen so I turned to adult books. Probably my favorites were the [...]

Lynn: This big picture book with its bright colors and bold shapes has our focus group’s name written all over it. Hamsters, race cars, building stuff – I knew they would love this and I wasn’t wrong. The rollicking verse vrooms across the two page spreads with with speech bubbles adding to the fun. A [...]

Lynn: Fasten your seat belts, the tranquil journey of the space ship Plexus is about to experience some major turbulence! Living Hell (Houghton, 2010) is gleeful gruesome fun with a terrific concept! Plexus is a colony ship filled with 1500 settlers taking turns with stasis sleep, searching for a new planet. Narrator 17-year-old Cheney (33 [...]

Lynn: There is something totally fascinating about dinosaurs. So many young readers fall under their spell, read every book they can find on the subject again and again and become walking encyclopedias of names and facts. Some of us never lose that fascination. A LOT of dinosaur books are published every year, many of them [...]

Lynn: Eleven-year old Poppy Ray wants to be a veterinarian but since her mother is allergic to animal fur the only pet she has ever had is a fish. This summer instead of going with her parents as usual to visit family in India, Poppy is spending the month with her Uncle Sanjay to help [...]

Cindy: Lynn is trying to teach me how to knit, but after reading Feeding the Sheep (Farrar, 2010) I’m glad that there are others whose knitting skills are more worthy than mine are of all that goes into making yarn. The cover drew me in, with the rosy cheeked girl being tickled by sheep eating [...]

Cindy: Here’s a graphic novel memoir that teenage girls can really sink their teeth into. Smile (Scholastic, 2010) is the story of the author’s teen experience with extended dental care. Raina’s initial orthodontic work is interrupted when she trips while running and loses one tooth and smashes the other up into her gum. The ensuing [...]