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:  The lives of artists are often a challenge to write about for children and none more so than Diego Rivera.  Controversial in almost all aspects of  his life, Diego Rivera was also a towering figure in the art world (and in stature) and his work remains incredibly powerful today. Susan Goldman Rubin’s new book, [...]

Lynn:  Don Brown brings a pivotal historical event to life for young readers in Henry and the Cannons:  An Extraordinary True Story of the American Revolution (Roaring Brook, 2013).  This IS an extraordinary story!   I remember studying this in school in Boston and thinking it was pretty cool but it wasn’t till we visited [...]

Cindy: I started reading Lincoln’s Grave Robbers (Scholastic 2013) on the plane ride home from ALA Midwinter the day that Sheinkin won a 2013 Newbery Honor and the 2013 YALSA Nonfiction Award and the 2013 Sibert Medal for Bomb. This one may not be quite as destined for award stickers at the end of the year, [...]

Lynn:  It was one of those shining moments in history when “the first Negro enlisted man accepted for the airborne forces…and the first officer” met.  They were the start of the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion, the first black paratroopers in our nation’s history created in the midst of the dark days of WWII.  Tanya Stone [...]

Cindy: Browsing the new book shelf at the public library usually means hauling home a stack of books and with luck finding a gem. In this case I found a new nonfiction series for young elementary school readers about endangered animals. I brought home Brown Bear by Suzi Eszterhas (Frances Lincoln 2012). The cover of a [...]

Cindy: When Lynn handed over her latest public library find,  (Atheneum 2012), I wasn’t quite sure where the story was going to lead me when I read the opening page: The fox had been stepping into stories since the beginning of time. Important stories, everyday stories, stories that only mattered to one or two people. [...]

Lynn:  Who would have thought, gentle readers, that such a thing as a chicken rescue shelter would be necessary?  Apparently many city dwellers are now permitted to raise chickens and many have no idea how much work that actually is.  City Chickens (Houghton 2012) tells the story of Chicken Run Rescue in Minneapolis and the [...]

Lynn:  Aronson’s opening is a wonderful hook.  “Dad, I found a fossil,” says 9-year-old Matthew Berger to his anthropologist father.  In The Skull in the Rock:  How a Scientist, a Boy, and Google Earth Opened a New Window on Human Origins (National Geographic 2012).  Lee assumed Matt’s find was a common bone like an antelope [...]

Lynn:  Rappaport’s Introduction to Beyond Courage:  The Untold Story of Jewish Resistance During the Holocaust (Candlewick 2012) echoes what so many of us, Jewish or not, have thought or felt. “Even as a Jew growing up in a Jewish household I had only ever heard that “Jews went like lambs to the slaughter during the [...]

Cindy: When I was perhaps 10 years old, I saw the Cardiff Giant on display at the Farmer’s Museum in Cooperstown, New York. I was rebelling against my father driving out of our way to take my brother to the Baseball Hall of Fame when he was never willing to drive out of the way [...]