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: We could post top ten lists for the next month and still not run out of ideas, but the 2011 publications have been coming in and we need to move on. Hey, Lynn, maybe we should post a list of the ten forthcoming books that we most want to read? My 2011 stack is [...]

Lynn: I LOVE reading Top Ten lists and Best of the Year lists!  It doesn’t have to be books either, I’ll read the Top Ten Idiotic Quotes of the year, the Ten Best Websites to Waste Time On or even the Top Ten Places to Fall Off Mountains  – and I’m afraid of heights!  Anyway, [...]

Lynn: Even before our school district decided to adopt the International Baccalaureate program we spent a lot of time trying to find books set in other countries or about other cultures.  Now with IB in the mix, those books are even more important for our curriculum.  So the two picture books we are reviewing today [...]

Cindy and Lynn: Santa left two big packages* for our middle school readers…we hope he was good to you this year, too. We are looking forward to 2011 and all of the good books on the horizon… * our glass display cases, wrapped up for the holidays. One of our students’ favorite displays. They ask [...]

Lynn: I am slow in blogging about The Ghost and the Goth (Hyperion 2010) but there is still time to grab it, kick back and enjoy it over the holiday break.  The teens in our book club have been talking about this one since last summer.  They were handing it off to each other – [...]

Lynn:   The books we test on our focus group come from a variety of sources.  Some arrive from generous publishers, some I buy and some I borrow.  So when the boys ask if this is a book we can keep, I know we’ve got a winner.  They were asking that on the very first page [...]

Cindy: I’m embarrassed to tell you how many months Lynn has been waiting for me (euphemism for “nagging me”) to read Finnikin of the Rock (Candlewick 2010). I knew it was a complex political fantasy that would take some concentration and I had planned to sink into it last summer, but life had other plans. [...]

Lynn and Cindy: Yes, it is the season of light and goodwill to mankind.  Let’s be honest though.  It is also the season of pushy crowds, stress, and irritating relatives.  What to do when that batch of cookies you are baking at midnight turns black and crusty?  A good expletive is definitely in order but [...]

Lynn: In I Dreamed of Flying Like a Bird:  My Adventures Photographing Wild Animals from a Helicopter (National Geographic 2010) the subtitle says it all.  Veteran photographer Haas writes about his fascinating and dangerous job photographing wildlife from small planes and helicopters.  Each page turn yields another unique and beautiful photograph with commentary by Haas [...]

Lynn: Cindy and I have two cozy picture books that are perfect for sleepy bedtimes or warm cuddles on a snowy day.  I’m leading off with Denise Fleming’s wonderful Sleepy, Oh So Sleepy (Holt 2010).  Each two-page spread shows a different baby animal drifting off to sleep, safely snuggled next to a parent.  The simple [...]