Booklist Online: Book Reviews from the American Library Association

Lynn: I’m convinced that our house has a sign clearly visible to all animal species that says, “Hopeless sucker lives here.” A mind-boggling array of creatures have wandered in over the years and many of them stayed. So with that and the fact that one of my sons served in Iraq, I knew I might [...]

Lynn: I have a woeful gap in my picture book knowledge, having spent most of my working years focusing on YA literature. Having grandsons and writing this blog is helping me to fill in the blanks and one of many delightful surprises is how many great YA authors also write wonderful picture books. In my [...]

Lynn: Phineas Bump, Assistant Marshal of the United States, is assigned to count the people of the great state of Vermont in 1790. He is “saddle-sore, heartsick and down on his luck” when he rides into Tunbridge. In the first house he calls on he meets Mrs. Pepper who fears that the tally will be [...]

Cindy: Biome research never looked so gorgeous as it does in Life in the Boreal Forest (Henry Holt, 2009). My sixth graders know this biome as the “tiaga” but Guiberson references that alternate name for this important ecosystem. The boreal forest covers most of the Northern Hemisphere and shelters so many creatures, many of which [...]

Lynn: We live on the Lake Michigan shore where winter starts in October, hangs on through April and where feet and feet of snow pile up. Our summers may be short but they are glorious! So I often find myself shopping for a new bathing suit, staring horrified at pale wobbly parts of my anatomy [...]

Cindy: Earlier this spring in a blog post about Charles Darwin I said I was leery of some biographies being unsuccessfully presented in picture books and used Henry David Thoreau as an example. Wouldn’t you know I would soon read a starred review about D. B. Johnson’s latest Henry book, Henry’s Night (Houghton, 2009) featuring [...]