Booklist Online: Book Reviews from the American Library Association

Cindy: Lonnie Collins Motion (Lo-Co-Motion) is back in this sequel to the Coretta Scott King author honor winning Locomotion. In Peace, Locomotion (Penguin/Putnam, 2009) Lonnie continues his story of life in a foster home with Miss Edna, separated from his sister Lili, in another foster home. I like the letter format of this installment even [...]

Lynn: Unfortunately the flu is spreading fast. Children are worried too and it is important to provide them with accurate information. This new book in the Gross Body Science series is about the body’s defenses and reactions to minute invaders. Crust and Spray (Lerner/Millbrook 2009) addresses this timely subject with humor and [...]

Cindy: Can an author really scare me in 30 seconds or less? The answer is yes when it is Margaret Atwood or Jack Gantos or M. T. Anderson or Art Slade. Yikes! Each story, poem, or graphic story in this slim volume can be read in less than half a minute. Lynn brought Half-Minute Horrors [...]

Lynn: “You gotta be kidding! You never heard of Sandy Koufax?” says the unseen fan narrating this strikingly different picture book. Readers drawn to the “lenticular” cover (lenses creating the illusion of movement) will be fascinated by the story inside. The enigmatic Sandy Koufax was, arguably, the greatest left-handed pitcher ever to play [...]

Lynn: You could not ask for a better book to booktalk than Escape Under the Forever Sky (Chronicle, 2009)! Sit back and picture this: the Ethiopian wilderness, a thirteen-year-old American girl who has been kidnapped, escapes and with her captors right behind her, runs barefooted straight into a hidden pride of lions. After a heart-stopping [...]

Lynn: If you are a regular reader of this blog you have heard us say over and over what a tremendous year it is for nonfiction. Sorry to sing the refrain again but, wow, what a year for nonfiction! Here is another remarkable nonfiction book that MUST be added to collections everywhere. This is Mother [...]

Lynn: Nighttime in the village of Eel-Smack-By-The-Bay and a lone writer sits on the third floor of the lighthouse pouring out his thoughts into his diary, anguish in every sentence. Yes, gentle reader, this man has been bound into servitude as his family has been bound before him to the infamous Bellweather family. Almost [...]

Cindy: It’s no small feat to take the events of the Holocaust, Anne Frank’s life and diary, and Wiesenthal’s lifelong work as a Nazi War Crime hunter and present them in 40 pages in a form accessible to elementary students. In the capable hands of Rubin, though, The Anne Frank Case (Holiday House, 2009) does [...]

Cindy: Here’s a fun new series for elementary and younger middle school readers. In volume one, The Gecko & Sticky: Villain’s Lair (Knopf, 2009), Dave has a talking pet gecko named Sticky, who gets him involved with a dastardly, demented villain due to a magical Aztec wristband Sticky has stolen that Damien Black (said villain) [...]

Cindy: How do arch rivals survive together? Very carefully. Lynn is a dyed in the (black and gold) wool Purdue Boilermaker while I am an Indiana Hoosier fanatic. Big Ten Basketball season tests our friendship every winter. When we worked in the same library we used to threaten to put a line down the middle [...]