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: Sometimes the biggest mystery about a book is the cover art! When Lynn and I worked together in the library we did tandem booktalking a lot. It was good for the students since we each had our own genre strengths and preferences (hers were science fiction and mystery and I favored horror and sad [...]

Lynn:  Cooking is a hot topic these days.  I remember the days when cooking was the stay-at-home-mom’s sole province but not only has American cooking changed markedly from the Campbell’s soup and casseroles days but men are often the major cooks in the family.  My oldest son is a far better cook than I am [...]

Lynn:  In an age of expensive entertainment, the opening sentence of Look Up!:  Bird-Watching in Your Own Backyard (Candlewick 2013) has a refreshing simplicity: “You don’t have to go anywhere fancy to watch birds!” In fact, Cate goes on to assure young readers that all they really need to do is learn to keep quiet [...]

Cindy: I wonder what kind of cake Cady would bake  to bring me optimum happiness? Given the mouth-watering recipes sprinkled throughout the text, I think I would be happy with any of them. And I do plan to try a few of them myself! It would be easier to bake a perfect cake than to [...]

Cindy: Trinket has never “loved anything so much as a story.” Of course, that does not include her mother, who she loved dearly. But as the story opens, her mother is taking her last breaths and by page 11 Trinket is an orphan and I was fighting back tears. The Seven Tales of Trinket (Farrar 2012) [...]

Lynn:  Sometimes a book goes right to my heart and takes me right back to my childhood.  Twelve Kinds of Ice (Houghton 2012) is that kind of book.  This is the story of one of the great pleasures of winter and how one family makes that pleasure something truly special. The First Ice The first [...]

Lynn:  When will I learn to listen to the book club kids?  They have been raving about The False Prince (Scholastic 2012) for months now and I JUST got to it.  In my defense, it was in such hot demand that it took me a long time to get it away from the kids.  Still, [...]

Cindy: When Lynn handed over her latest public library find,  (Atheneum 2012), I wasn’t quite sure where the story was going to lead me when I read the opening page: The fox had been stepping into stories since the beginning of time. Important stories, everyday stories, stories that only mattered to one or two people. [...]

Lynn:  Few people have heard of Harry Kellar yet he was idolized by Harry Houdini, was immensely popular and had a career that lasted for decades.  In The Amazing Harry Kellar:  Great American Magician (Calkin Creek 2012) author Gail Jarrow asserts that Kellar was even a more talented magician than Houdini whose fame lives on.  [...]

Lynn: I SO needed this book a few years ago when the focus group and I embarked on our first monarch hatching!  We muddled through and have watched many many caterpillars turn dutifully into butterflies and fly away but there’s nothing like the joy of an instructional guide.  Even though we’re veterans now, we love [...]