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:  Most mystery fans love sequels.  We fall in love with a character and can’t wait to read along as he or she takes on a new case.  I’m in that camp and I love nothing more than another installment of my favorite sleuth.  So for our continuing celebration of Mystery Month, here are two [...]

Mystery Month is underway at Booklist and there is a lot of fun ahead. If you like your mystery served up with a heavy dose of fantasy, you will enjoy puzzling out the many mysteries woven into Sage Blackwood’s stellar novel. Cindy: It’s a good day when you find a new fantasy that reminds you [...]

Cindy: I was totally sucked in by the cover of Zebra Forest (Candlewick 2013). Add the promise of family secrets and I’m in. Annie and Rew live with a grandma who has good days…and bad. Annie has three wishes: 1. Get tall. 2. Have an adventure. 3. Meet my father. She realizes her chances are [...]

Lynn:  It’s March and we bloggers have mostly leaped into the new publishing year.   I’m still playing catch-up though and I’m so glad I didn’t miss Shadow on the Mountain (Abrams/Amulet 2012).  Preus writes about a part of WWII history that most of us know little about and bases her book on the “true [...]

Lynn:   Desperate people with armed men intent on their capture, an entire town racing to their rescue, facing down the villains and risking their very lives for what is right.   It sounds like the plot for a terrific action movie but this is the true story being told in The Price of Freedom:  How [...]

Cindy: I started reading Lincoln’s Grave Robbers (Scholastic 2013) on the plane ride home from ALA Midwinter the day that Sheinkin won a 2013 Newbery Honor and the 2013 YALSA Nonfiction Award and the 2013 Sibert Medal for Bomb. This one may not be quite as destined for award stickers at the end of the year, [...]

Lynn:  It was one of those shining moments in history when “the first Negro enlisted man accepted for the airborne forces…and the first officer” met.  They were the start of the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion, the first black paratroopers in our nation’s history created in the midst of the dark days of WWII.  Tanya Stone [...]

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, [...]

Lynn:  Aronson’s opening is a wonderful hook.  “Dad, I found a fossil,” says 9-year-old Matthew Berger to his anthropologist father.  In The Skull in the Rock:  How a Scientist, a Boy, and Google Earth Opened a New Window on Human Origins (National Geographic 2012).  Lee assumed Matt’s find was a common bone like an antelope [...]

Cindy: When I was perhaps 10 years old, I saw the Cardiff Giant on display at the Farmer’s Museum in Cooperstown, New York. I was rebelling against my father driving out of our way to take my brother to the Baseball Hall of Fame when he was never willing to drive out of the way [...]