Booklist Online: More than 130,000 book reviews for librarians, book groups, and book lovers - from the trusted experts at the American Library Association

Cindy: If I say, “Board Book,” I’m guessing that you might think of yellow duckies and furry puppies. The last thing that might come to mind is a set of NHL© concept books that use the players and trappings of NHL© teams to teach colors and numbers and animals. Christopher Jordan’s set, My First NHL© Books (Tundra [...]

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: There’s no lack of picture books dealing with the important toddler issue of sharing, but few so delightfully illustrated as Mine! (Knopf 2011). Patrice Barton’s digitally created pencil sketches are full of humor and the complete range of emotions that toddlers exhibit when a favorite toy, or toys, (or dog), is under negotiation. The [...]

Lynn: I am sad to report that I am horrible at math – so horrible that the thought of anything even vaguely math-related is enough to make me break out in a cold sweat!  So the fact that I am writing about a book that has the word “equation” in the title should be a [...]

Cindy: I collect rocks everywhere I travel (a habit from my grandmother) and I am partial to ones with holes in them, but this collection in If Rocks Could Sing: A Discovered Alphabet (Tricycle Press 2011) really ROCKS. Instead of collecting seashells on her Florida beaches, McGuirk slowly built an alphabet collection of rocks A-Z. [...]

Cindy: Did your mother warn you that you could harm your eyes by reading in the dark? Or that if you crossed your eyes they would stay that way? Lynn found this great informational book series from Lerner called Is That a Fact? that challenges these and other burning burning questions. We read Does an [...]

Lynn: Summer means that I have my grandsons with me all day and I have been reminded daily of some of the universal truths about young children. I won’t bore you with an inclusive list but some that rise to the top in my world include: little boys are never bored with bugs, running through [...]

Lynn: It is spring break for us at Bookends and I thought I’d give Cindy some time off and put the focus group to work today. They got to choose a book to blog and I’m not surprised that Chester’s Masterpiece (Kids Can Press 2010) is making an appearance today. Chester, whose ego matches his [...]

Lynn: “I love dogs,” says the unseen narrator and so will every reader by the end of this humorous look at our canine friends. In Dogs (S&S, 2010) Gravett uses a warm palette with perfectly placed splashes of color on a creamy background, depicting dogs of all sizes and shapes. Big dogs and small dogs, [...]

Cindy: The Black Book of Colors (Groundwood, 2008) is a gem of a book that flew under the radar last year even though it garnered four starred reviews and a prize at the 2007 Bologna Children’s Book Fair. How does someone who can’t see comprehend colors? Through his other senses of touch, smell, sound, and [...]