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Cindy: As I write this, Lynn is winging her way to The American Library Association Midwinter Meetings in Dallas…propelled as much by excitement and nerves as she is by Delta Airlines. Her 2012 Newbery Award deliberations start tomorrow and I am left behind to work for two more days before I can leave town and [...]

Cindy: As Courtney Jones reported over at the Likely Stories Booklist Blog earlier today, the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes shortlists were announced today, including the adult novel category judged by Booklist’s own Donna Seaman. As one of the judges for the YA Lit jury, I’ve been chewing my fingernails waiting for our list to [...]

Lynn: Our focus group, Hayden and Mason, my 7-year-old grandsons, work hard for us all year testing books and giving us their opinions.  So it’s only fair that they get to list their top favorites of the year too.  They are growing up fast so they have chosen a wide range of books but they [...]

Cindy: We could post top ten lists for the next month and still not run out of ideas, but the 2011 publications have been coming in and we need to move on. Hey, Lynn, maybe we should post a list of the ten forthcoming books that we most want to read? My 2011 stack is [...]

Lynn: I LOVE reading Top Ten lists and Best of the Year lists!  It doesn’t have to be books either, I’ll read the Top Ten Idiotic Quotes of the year, the Ten Best Websites to Waste Time On or even the Top Ten Places to Fall Off Mountains  – and I’m afraid of heights!  Anyway, [...]

Cindy and Lynn: We are in the holiday spirit and are avoiding our own holiday preparations to prepare a gift for our Bookends readers. We have assembled an annotated list of recent books that would make great gifts for young readers this holiday season. It is organized by broad age level from preschool through high [...]

Lynn and Cindy: The Finalists for the 2009 LA Times Book Prize were announced Monday and we are really excited! Four of these were in Lynn’s Top Ten. Here are the finalists: James Cross Giblin. The Rise and Fall of Senator Joe McCarthy Frances Hardinge. The Lost Conspiracy Deborah Heiligman. Charles and Emma: The Darwin’s [...]

Cindy and Lynn: So here we are. Last year we listed our Baker’s Dozen of top books and who are we to argue with tradition? These are our choices for the most outstanding teen books for this year in terms of literary merit. Each list is arranged alphabetically by title. We’ve always wondered how authors [...]

Cindy & Lynn: Today’s Bookends Best of the Year list features books published for upper elementary and early middle school students. We’ll lead off with titles we both have at the top of our list and then will each add a few personal favorites. Want more information? Titles are linked to our prior Bookends blog [...]

Lynn: Our list of top pictures books is going to be a bit different from the format of our other lists this week. As we’ve mentioned, our focus group, my 6-year-old grandsons, take their job very seriously and they were giving me so much input about the picture book choices that we decided to step [...]