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: I picked up Pie (Scholastic 2011) a few months ago to read as a palate cleanser between review books. It had a pie and a cat on the cover and looked like a lighthearted read. I live in Michigan and it was prime berry season when I started writing this post in early August. I didn’t know [...]

Cindy: This book has everything I need in a picture book: illustrations by Tricia Tusa and a girl on a swing. I can’t pass up a swing set and neither can my oldest daughter. Follow Me (Harcourt 2011) perfectly captures the magical feel of an afternoon spent swinging to the sky and back. The book’s [...]

Lynn: I usually don’t think much about my age but while I certainly wasn’t around in 1896, the time of Basketball Belles:  How Two Teams and One Scrappy Player Put Women’s Hoops on the Map (Holiday 2011), I did play “Girl’s Basketball” rules in high school.  Girls were considered too delicate to do more than [...]

Lynn: Mrs. Finnemore has her paws full!  In Edwin Speaks Up (Random/Schwartz & Wade 2011) she is taking her five little ferrets on a trip to the grocery store.  But first she has to find her keys!  “Gloo Poop SHOE noogie froo KEY,”  babbles baby Edwin.  Sophie Blackall’s full-page opening illustration cleverly depicts Mrs. Finnemore’s [...]

Lynn: Once upon a time there was an elephant called Birch who dreamed of beauty and a boy named Pigeon who lived on Birch’s back.  Pigeon never leaves Birch’s back – never ever.  He has everything he needs and even goes to 5th grade from the safety of the elephant’s back because elephants are so [...]

Lynn: “It was as if I didn’t exist without music,” Leonard Bernstein.  It is Berenstein’s intense purpose that is the focal point of Rubin’s outstanding new biography, Music Was IT!:  Young Leonard Bernstein (Charlesbridge 2011). Teens with a similar driving passion in their lives will discover a strong connection to the incredibly gifted young man [...]

Cindy and Lynn: We love to collect library quotes and were delighted when we found this one by this year’s YALSA  Margaret A. Edwards’ winner, Sir Terry Pratchett: The library didn’t only contain magical books, the ones which are chained to the shelves and are very dangerous. It also contained perfectly ordinary books, printed on [...]

Cindy: There’s no lack of picture books dealing with the important toddler issue of sharing, but few so delightfully illustrated as Mine! (Knopf 2011). Patrice Barton’s digitally created pencil sketches are full of humor and the complete range of emotions that toddlers exhibit when a favorite toy, or toys, (or dog), is under negotiation. The [...]

Lynn: Did you know that Cleopatra believed a concoction of horse teeth, deer marrow and roasted mice would cure baldness?  Or that Queen Elizabeth I had more than eighty wigs – all in shades of red?  Or that Japanese skin doctors invented hair implants in 1939?  I could go on and on but really you [...]

Lynn: I am sad to report that I am horrible at math – so horrible that the thought of anything even vaguely math-related is enough to make me break out in a cold sweat!  So the fact that I am writing about a book that has the word “equation” in the title should be a [...]