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: What is it about dieting that makes you see tempting food everywhere? New Orleans is probably one of the worst places to go while trying to avoid sweets and carbs but when even the books start making you salivate things are bad! Lynn and I are wrestling with post-ALA-Conference stupor this morning but wanted [...]

Cindy: I have found a kindred spirit–someone who loves baked goods as much as I do in Betty Bunny Loves Chocolate Cake (Dial 2011)! When Betty Bunny is first offered some chocolate cake, she isn’t so sure…she hasn’t had it before and she’s not very good at trying new things. But then she tastes it [...]

Lynn: A lot of stray and battered creatures have found their way to my door over the years.  Some stayed just till they were healthy and some moved in for good.  My husband grumbles that there must be some animal equivalent of “soft-touch lives here” marking wherever we have lived.  So while I am a [...]

Cindy and Lynn: We all know we are not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but we all do. Our students do and it certainly influences us. We get really irritated (and so do our teens) when the cover art does not accurately portray the contents of the book. We understand that marketing is the [...]

Cindy: The Tompkins siblings, India, Finn, and young Mouse (who makes fabulous squeaking noises) have their world turned upside down in No Passengers Beyond This Point (Dial 2011) when their mother tells them that their house has been foreclosed on and she is sending them by themselves to live with an uncle in Colorado while she finishes teaching out [...]

Lynn: “Some people think it’s just smelly swamps.”  Yezerski shows us how wrong this notion is in Meadowlands (Farrar 2011) but it wasn’t too long ago that this vibrant ecosystem nestled on the Hackensack River was poisoned and foul.  Illustrated with beautiful water color paintings, Yezersky takes us back to pre-colonial times when the wetlands [...]

Lynn: “Don’t be difficult, some things are just different,” says Sally’s teacher as Sally peers dubiously at her science project egg in Argus (Candlewick 2011).  Different it is!   The egg is large and green with yellow spots and readers know that something unusual is inside.  The enticing cover gives away the secret but the [...]

Lynn: Creators of the fabulous Babymouse series, Jennifer and Matt Holm, debut a new graphic novel series that will have readers everywhere clapping their pseudopods in glee.  Squish:  Super Amoeba (Random 2011) puts the microscopic world under the lens.  Who would have thought it?  Single cell critters go to school, eat tacos, get detention and [...]

Lynn: I’m probably not telling anyone anything new here but having just listened to both grandsons read me all 300 facts at least twice in the last three days, I decided to tell you anyway.  When we opened the package from the publisher with Weird But True 3 (National Geographic 2011), I was nearly flattened [...]

Cindy: The folks at Twitter sent me an email telling me that they’d missed me. Aw, shucks. So I was guilted into logging in and making a little chirp and then I scanned some of the tweets that had piled up. This gem was found amongst Neil Gaiman’s offerings: Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops. [...]