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: “Hickory dickory dock, the mouse ran up the clock,” is a rhyme most of us know from childhood.  Even in today’s too-busy-to-read-world at least some nursery rhymes are passed along to children.  Nursery rhymes have never been as much fun though as in Nursery Rhyme Comics:  50 Timeless Rhymes from 50 Celebrated Cartoonists (Roaring [...]

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 [...]

Cindy: “Most folks my age and complexion don’t speak much about the past. Sometimes it’s just too hard to talk about…So it’s important that you pay attention, honey, because I’m only going to tell you this story but once.” Fortunately for us, the story has been captured in a gorgeous book so we can read [...]

Lynn: It’s waaay too early to begin making lists but Balloons Over Broadway:  The True Story of the Puppeteer of Macy’s Parade (Houghton 2011) is already one of my favorites for this year.  First there is the fascinating story of how the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade came to have its signature giant balloons.  Then there [...]

Lynn: Talk about a dream team!  Caldecott winning illustrator Beth Krommes teams up again with Joyce Sidman, winner of three Newbery Honor medals in the exquisite Swirl By Swirl:  Spirals in Nature (Houghton 2011).  The result is just what you would expect – another brilliantly crafted book.  This time the subject is the ” spiral: [...]

Cindy: Lynn found this delightful autobiography of a man who befriended Picasso as a child. The Boy Who Bit Picasso (Abrams 2011) obviously illuminated the great painter’s life, but in a unique way for a youth biography: looking at a famous figure from the perspective of someone who sat on his lap, visited his studio [...]

Cindy: This book has everything I need in a picture book: illustrations by Tricia Tusa and a girl on a swing. I can’t pass up a swing set and neither can my oldest daughter. Follow Me (Harcourt 2011) perfectly captures the magical feel of an afternoon spent swinging to the sky and back. The book’s [...]

Lynn: “I have used these things to say what is to me the wideness and wonder of the world.” – Georgia O’Keeffe.  Rubin has chosen this most appropo of quotations for the title of her latest biography, Wideness and Wonder:  The Life and Art of Georgia O’Keeffee (Chronicle 2011).  It is an absorbing book and [...]

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 [...]

Cindy: I’ve read a few teen biographies about pop culture artist Andy Warhol but I have to admit I went into Fabulous! A Portrait of Andy Warhol (Henry Holt 2011) thinking, what? A picture book biography for young children of the controversial Warhol? I needn’t have worried. Obviously, Christensen left out some of the details of Warhol’s [...]