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 have a tradition in our house of trying to remember to say, “Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit,” on the first of each month to have good luck for the month. It is based on a British superstition that has many variations (gotta love Wikipedia). The friend who taught it to me years ago said it [...]

Cindy: So many of our middle school students walk in the library and ask this question: “Do you have any good books?” My flip comment to them is always, “No, we only buy bad books for the library…” and then I wait for them to laugh, but many of them just look disappointed and start to walk [...]

Cindy: ”Men, I have a great idea.” When Henry launches into one of his great ideas, Riley starts taking scientific notes and Reed starts wondering how bad he will smell after the execution of this latest idea! One of my favorite Gary Paulsen books is How Angel Peterson Got His Name. This new offering, Masters of Disaster [...]

Lynn: How DID the Sphinx get to the museum?  The title totally captured my attention and the charming cover illustrations drew the focus group in immediately.  The twins are fascinated by the ancient Egyptians so I knew How the Sphinx Got to the Museum (Blue Apple 2010) was going to be a favorite.  (A Playmobile [...]

Cindy: Lynn found this book, but I’m so excited about it I am scooping her on it. We usually play nicely together and allow the person who read the book first have the lead on the blog, but I’m not always nice. Palazzo Inverso (Houghton 2010) pays tribute to the tessellations and the optical illusion [...]

Lynn: I’m sure readers have noticed that we don’t write about a book unless one or both of us likes it.  We try hard to post about a variety of genres and ages ranges but our favorites DO have a way of sneaking in.  Anyone notice the numbers of fantasy and sf we post about?  [...]

Lynn: In his introduction to Before They Were Famous:  How Seven Artists Got Their Start (Millbrook 2010) Bob Raczka tells of chancing on a painting Pablo Picasso did when he was only 8 years old.  Raczka wondered if he could find childhood creations from other famous artists and this intriguing book was born.  He was [...]

Lynn: We choose the books we blog for a variety of reasons.  Sometimes they are of outstanding literary quality or they have solid curricular connections.  Sometimes they are books especially popular with our teens or the focus group and sometimes they are books we just loved reading.  When ALL those qualities come together you’ve got [...]

Cindy and Lynn: We are home from the wonderful ALA Midwinter Meetings and despite our return very late last night to a winter storm and snowy roads we are still experiencing a post-conference glow.  It was a terrific conference!  We got to see and hear some amazing speakers, our meetings were interesting and stimulating and [...]

Lynn: I’m feeling a little frantic about getting some of my top picks for the year blogged before THE big youth award announcements.  Cindy and I didn’t do lists of our top picture books this year but if we had Mirror (Candlewick, Nov. 2010) would have been on mine!  This is a stunningly designed and [...]