Booklist Online: Book Reviews from the American Library Association

Cindy: We haven’t gotten over our fall fascination with the National Parks and so this week for Nonfiction Monday we are headed to California to explore the mighty redwoods. According to Redwoods (Roaring Brook/Flashpoint, 2009) since 1850 and the advent of large-scale logging “more than 95% of the original redwood forests have been destroyed. [...]

Lynn: When PBS aired The National Parks: America’s Best Idea in September I was glued to the television. I had my popcorn and I sat for six glorious nights marveling at what I was seeing and hearing. In true librarian fashion, I had checked out a copy of the accompanying book ahead [...]

Lynn: “You gotta be kidding! You never heard of Sandy Koufax?” says the unseen fan narrating this strikingly different picture book. Readers drawn to the “lenticular” cover (lenses creating the illusion of movement) will be fascinated by the story inside. The enigmatic Sandy Koufax was, arguably, the greatest left-handed pitcher ever to play [...]

Cindy: Ladies and gentlemen, Children Of All Ages, with delightful derring-do and glitzy grammatical garnishing, Cindy Dobrez and Lynn Rutan, in conjunction with the superior cyberspectacular known as www.Ringling.com are proud to present the following fabulous book review! (this website will Barnumize your email or text!) Where to start in describing the wealth of interesting [...]

Cindy: I’m embarrassed by how much I didn’t know about Bob Marley. I have visited Jamaica twice, listened to his music for decades, purchased a 4-foot carved statue of him this spring to feature at our backyard tiki bar and hosted a grad party for my daughter with a Jamaican/ rasta/ reggae theme. I should [...]

Cindy: It’s no small feat to take the events of the Holocaust, Anne Frank’s life and diary, and Wiesenthal’s lifelong work as a Nazi War Crime hunter and present them in 40 pages in a form accessible to elementary students. In the capable hands of Rubin, though, The Anne Frank Case (Holiday House, 2009) does [...]

Cindy: There’s a girl licking chocolate frosting (or Nutella spread) off her finger on the cover. That’s all I need to pick up The Sweet Life of Stella Madison (Random/Delacorte, July 2009). Actually, one of our BBYA teen readers reviewed this at book club and it was her comments that spurred me to read it. [...]

Cindy: Johannes Vermeer was a mysterious 17th century Dutch painter with only 34-36 existing paintings and very little known about his life and work. His painting, The Girl with the Pearl Earring, became the subject of a lauded adult novel by Tracy Chevalier. In The Vermeer Interviews (Millbrook, 2009), Bob Raczka attempts to ferret out [...]

Lynn: We live on the Lake Michigan shore where winter starts in October, hangs on through April and where feet and feet of snow pile up. Our summers may be short but they are glorious! So I often find myself shopping for a new bathing suit, staring horrified at pale wobbly parts of my anatomy [...]

Cindy: Earlier this spring in a blog post about Charles Darwin I said I was leery of some biographies being unsuccessfully presented in picture books and used Henry David Thoreau as an example. Wouldn’t you know I would soon read a starred review about D. B. Johnson’s latest Henry book, Henry’s Night (Houghton, 2009) featuring [...]