Booklist Online: More than 130,000 book reviews for librarians, book groups, and book lovers - from the trusted experts at the American Library Association

Lynn: Jurmain opens her charming book, Worst of Friends:  Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and the True Story of an American Feud (Penguin/Dutton 2011) by asking a most intriguing question, “Can Presidents be pals?”  In many cases the answer was no.  “Theodore Roosevelt thought McKinley had the backbone of a chocolate eclair.”  But sometimes the answer was [...]

Lynn: “It was a quiet morning at preschool until Adelaide annoyed Bailey.”  An escalating alphabetic chain reaction follows right up to the drenching moment when Zelda zaps Adelaide.  Miss Mabel asks Adelaide to apologize and soon calm returns to the school as everyone settles in for story time. Bottner’s delightfully droll disasters are cleverly captured [...]

Cindy: As I write this, Lynn is winging her way to The American Library Association Midwinter Meetings in Dallas…propelled as much by excitement and nerves as she is by Delta Airlines. Her 2012 Newbery Award deliberations start tomorrow and I am left behind to work for two more days before I can leave town and [...]

Cindy: I love when I find a nonfiction book that does something new. Music informational books are few and far between considering how much music means to teens. Of course, by the time you purchase and process a Justin Bieber biography, it seems there’s a new kid on the block so it’s hard to keep [...]

Lynn: Stiefvater kicks off  The Scorpio Races (Scholastic 2011) with one of the most attention-grabbing sentences of the year: “It was the first of November and so, today, someone would die.” Find me one soul who could put the book down after that opening!  Stiefvater doesn’t make it any easier to stop reading after that [...]

Cindy: This morning when I saw this video it had 310 views. I emailed Lynn to ask if she’d seen it and said we need to blog this but we were both busy today. This evening as I write this, the video has over 74,000 views and will be climbing. But you can’t miss this, [...]

Cindy: Paper or plastic? We are all familiar with that question, but I wasn’t familiar with the female inventor who gave us the machine to make a paper grocery bag. In The Bag! Margaret Knight Wraps It Up (Tundra 2011) is a delightful picture book biography of a little known inspiring woman. The book opens [...]

Cindy: Do you mind if I gush? I’ve fallen in love with the Wren family. I don’t get to read as many children’s books as I do middle school and teen books so I missed What Happened on Fox Street, the prequel to Mo Wren, Lost and Found (Harper/Balzer & Bray 2011). Readers can easily [...]

Lynn: I’m reading for Newbery this year so I’ve gifted myself with only an occasional upper YA book and most of them have been on audio.  Few have shaken me as much as Mal Peet’s newest, Life:  An Exploded Diagram (Candlewick 2011).  When brilliant narrator Simon Vance (Brilliance 2011) read the last sentence, all I [...]