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: Stiefvater kicks off  The Scorpio Races (Scholastic 2011) with one of the most attention-grabbing sentences of the year: “It was the first of November and so, today, someone would die.” Find me one soul who could put the book down after that opening!  Stiefvater doesn’t make it any easier to stop reading after that [...]

Lynn: Peer into the heart of any of us who have watched a ballet performance and you will find a secret wish to join the corps!  Those gorgeous costumes, the beautiful music, those amazing leaps that must feel like flying!  After seeing my first ballet at 8 I too fell in love with the idea [...]

Lynn: Long-time readers of Bookends will remember that I am not a big fan of verse novels or of sad books.  So you are probably surprised to see me leading off a review of this door-stopper of a verse novel about an immensely famous disaster.  I’m pretty surprised myself but every so often a book [...]

Lynn: It is only fair to warn you – if you have deadlines, important obligations or responsibilities, don’t start The Name of the Star (Penguin/Putnam 2011)!  I guarantee that once you start reading, you will set aside everything else.  Damn the deadlines, full speed ahead!  I won’t disclose all the major tasks I ignored but [...]

Cindy: Can I just steal Daniel Kraus’ review for my blog post of  This Dark Endeavor: The Apprenticeship of Victor Frankenstein (Simon & Schuster 2011)? Okay, not the whole thing, I need to earn my keep, but how about the opening? That Victor Frankenstein must’ve been a handful as a teen, eh? The latest entry [...]

Cindy: Well, we can’t be at New York Comic Con this weekend, but we can blog about a graphic novel to join the party from afar. Anya’s Ghost (First Second 2011) is perfectly executed and is perfect for the pre-Halloween season although it will be enjoyed year-round. Anya has self image problems and struggles to [...]

Lynn: I really shouldn’t reveal how clay-like my reviewer’s feet are but I seem to confess my failings in this blog all the time.   This clearly has to stop but before I talk about Martha Brook’s new book, Queen of Hearts (Farrar 2011), I need to say that I usually dislike books about people [...]

Lynn: “It was as if I didn’t exist without music,” Leonard Bernstein.  It is Berenstein’s intense purpose that is the focal point of Rubin’s outstanding new biography, Music Was IT!:  Young Leonard Bernstein (Charlesbridge 2011). Teens with a similar driving passion in their lives will discover a strong connection to the incredibly gifted young man [...]

Lynn: I love to get book recommendations from friends and I especially love to get them from our book club teens!  That is the case with Death Cloud (Farrar 2011).  Cindy and I run an after-school book club in which the teens discuss the new just-out-of-the-boxes books for this year.  We like to hear what [...]

Lynn: I love fantasy but it’s a crowded genre and sadly far too many of them blend into an indistinguishable blur for me.  So it’s a true delight to meet a book as fresh and inventive as Akata Witch (Penguin/Viking 2011).  Sunny was born in New York to Nigerian parents and the family returned to [...]