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: 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: 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: 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: We believe in unbiased reporting here at Bookends and in presenting ALL sides and opinions.  It’s not easy to pursue this noble goal in book reviewing and sometimes the cost is high.  In my case that cost has been domestic harmony.  Yes, faithful readers, the focus group and I have been engaged in a [...]

Lynn: Ah – sibling relationships!  Ask even the shyest child if their brother/sister ever does anything annoying and stand back.  George and narrator Nancy Carpenter have mined this rich field with their charming Emma Dilemma:  Big Sister Poems (Clarion 2011).  I’m an older sister myself and this book is right on target!  (Notice I said [...]

Cindy: I’ve read a few teen biographies about pop culture artist Andy Warhol but I have to admit I went into Fabulous! A Portrait of Andy Warhol (Henry Holt 2011) thinking, what? A picture book biography for young children of the controversial Warhol? I needn’t have worried. Obviously, Christensen left out some of the details of Warhol’s [...]

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: Our focus group are total graphic novel fans.  Thank you publishers for giving us more and more wonderful graphic novels for younger readers!  Zita the Spacegirl (First Second 2010) was a huge hit with the boys and it took me a while to get it away from them to read myself.  (Cindy was a [...]

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 [...]

Cindy: Did your mother warn you that you could harm your eyes by reading in the dark? Or that if you crossed your eyes they would stay that way? Lynn found this great informational book series from Lerner called Is That a Fact? that challenges these and other burning burning questions. We read Does an [...]