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: 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 [...]

Lynn: Cindy and I may differ on our favorite genres but we are in complete agreement about funny books.  It is REALLY hard to write funny books and we LOVE them.  Kristen Tracy writes really funny books and today we are going to talk about two of them.  I get to start with The Reinvention [...]

Cindy: Holy cow, Lisa McMann! I’m glad I can’t experience your dreams if your fiction is any indication of what goes on at night in your head! McMann’s WAKE trilogy is very popular in our high schools, but I can’t wait to booktalk Cryer’s Cross (Simon Pulse 2011) with my eighth graders this fall. I [...]

Cindy: Dana Reinhardt gets better with every book and The Summer I Learned to Fly (Random/Wendy Lamb 2011) is no exception. Last year’s The Things a Brother Knows was a piercing look at the relationship between two boys and the impact of war. In this story, Reinhardt examines the intricacies of mother-daughter relationships and perfectly captures [...]

Cindy: While Lynn is booking a real trip to Europe this summer, I have to pacify myself with a virtual trip through The Last Little Blue Envelope (HarperTeen 2011).  Those of you who followed Ginny’s European scavenger hunt in the first book, Thirteen Little Blue Envelopes, will remember that her backpack was stolen in Greece [...]

Lynn: One of the frequently heard laments from our book club teens is, “Why doesn’t anyone ever write about NORMAL teens?”  Pete Hautman must have been listening because his new book, The Big Crunch (Scholastic 2011) is exactly that.  No one is a vampire or werewolf, no one is dead, struggling with a deadly disease [...]

Lynn: It was a sunny Saturday, March 25, 1911.  New Yorkers were enjoying the weather in the park when they heard the fire engines racing to a ten-story building housing the Triangle Waist Company.  The top three floors were ablaze in what was to be the deadliest workplace fire for 90 years.  Albert Marrin recounts [...]

Lynn: 15-year-old Lina is a gifted artist from a loving family looking forward to an exciting future in Between Shades of Gray (Penguin 2011).  But it is 1941 in Lithuania and in the middle of the night, Soviet soldiers storm into her home, seize her and her family and force them onto trains packed with [...]

Cindy: We have a pair of school related disaster books today that will make great booktalks and will grab reluctant readers. Mine fits well with all the snow that has been piling up in West Michigan this winter. I wish I had read it before our numerous snow days…imagine being trapped at school–horrors! Trapped (Scholastic [...]

Lynn: Already racking up 6 starred reviews, Chime (Penguin/Dial 2011) is winning admirers everywhere. I am one of the throng and if Bookends gave stars we’d add to the count.  It’s been a while since a book hooked me so thoroughly or kept me so spellbound.  I could probably save a lot of writing time [...]