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: Polka-dot houses, broken dolls hanging from telephone poles, old shoes in trees  – for 25 years Tyree Guyton has created controversial art in a special place.  Magic Trash:  A Story of Tyree Guyton and His Art (Charlesbridge 2011) is an exuberant celebration of Guyton’s Heidelberg Project in East Side Detroit. Tyree’s mother worked hard [...]

Lynn: Hazel and Jack have been like two peas in a pod ever since Jack moved in next door when they were six.  He was wearing a pirate patch and was the only person she knew “who saw things the way they could be instead of just what they were.”  Years later, when he suddenly [...]

Cindy: Elise Broach, forgive me, but THIS was the book that I was supposed to write! Missing on Superstition Mountain (Holt 2011) is far better than anything I would have written…but still! My grandparents moved from New York state to be in Zane Grey country sixty odd years ago and settled on a couple of [...]

Cindy: I picked up Pie (Scholastic 2011) a few months ago to read as a palate cleanser between review books. It had a pie and a cat on the cover and looked like a lighthearted read. I live in Michigan and it was prime berry season when I started writing this post in early August. I didn’t know [...]

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 [...]

Cindy: There are books that make me sad. Some that make me cry. And then there are books that unhinge me like A Monster Calls (Candlewick 2011). I read this on a plane last spring and was crying from the forward explaining the back story. Siobahn Dowd, one of my favorite authors, lost her life [...]

Lynn: I am fascinated by stories of an artist’s journey and how better to tell that story than through illustration!  Renown illustrator Allen Say tells his story from his early years in Japan to his immigration to the United States with text, pen and ink drawings, watercolor paintings and family photographs.  Drawing from Memory (Scholastic [...]

Lynn: Inquiring minds want to know!  What happens when a superhero sneezes?  If you guessed that it wouldn’t be pretty, you guessed right.  Captain Amazing is allergic to peanuts and when his symptoms are triggered by a stray groundnut it is clear he needs an assistant.  His lonely pets agree – he’s never home with [...]