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: Jurmain opens her charming book, Worst of Friends:  Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and the True Story of an American Feud (Penguin/Dutton 2011) by asking a most intriguing question, “Can Presidents be pals?”  In many cases the answer was no.  “Theodore Roosevelt thought McKinley had the backbone of a chocolate eclair.”  But sometimes the answer was [...]

Cindy: Paper or plastic? We are all familiar with that question, but I wasn’t familiar with the female inventor who gave us the machine to make a paper grocery bag. In The Bag! Margaret Knight Wraps It Up (Tundra 2011) is a delightful picture book biography of a little known inspiring woman. The book opens [...]

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: When my oldest daughter first took guitar lessons, she struggled as the instructor made her pluck out the notes for ”Mary Had a Little Lamb.” My brother was disdainful of that method. He said, “I can teach her three chords and she’ll be able to play any Bob Dylan song she wants, and what more would she [...]

Lynn: One of the best – and most humbling – benefits of being a book reviewer is the constant collision with new knowledge.  As an adult I’ve come to appreciate Dickens’ writing much more than I did in my high school years when we painfully dissected his novels in class.  I knew only a little [...]

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 [...]

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 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 [...]