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 [...]

Lynn: “Hickory dickory dock, the mouse ran up the clock,” is a rhyme most of us know from childhood.  Even in today’s too-busy-to-read-world at least some nursery rhymes are passed along to children.  Nursery rhymes have never been as much fun though as in Nursery Rhyme Comics:  50 Timeless Rhymes from 50 Celebrated Cartoonists (Roaring [...]

Lynn: Our focus group loves science and I think they share that love with lots of kids.  We’re always looking for great new science-related books for the younger set and this week we have something a little unusual – picture books that are fiction yet also present scientific topics.  These two are ideal for common [...]

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 [...]

Lynn: Mo Willems is a national treasure.  He is a gladsome spark of brilliance for parents and grandparents of preschoolers/ beginning readers everywhere – providing that miracle of miracles:  books that can be read/listened to a zillion times without driving the grown-up screaming from the room.  Mr. Willems – thank you!  As the grandparent of [...]

Lynn: I’ve always cheered for the underdog (as can be seen by my life-long support of the Chicago Cubs) and I think a lot of kids share my tendency to root for the little guy.  The tortoise and the hare is a favorite tale for both me and the focus group and The Great Race [...]

Lynn: Everyone has a theory about Harris Burdick, but Lemony Snickett, never known for his lack of opinions, asserts in his introduction to The Chronicles of Harris Burdick (Houghton 2011) “that these are the actual stories written by Harris Burdick, given by Burdick to the various authors who are pretending to write them.”  Well, I’m always [...]

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 [...]

Lynn: I usually don’t think much about my age but while I certainly wasn’t around in 1896, the time of Basketball Belles:  How Two Teams and One Scrappy Player Put Women’s Hoops on the Map (Holiday 2011), I did play “Girl’s Basketball” rules in high school.  Girls were considered too delicate to do more than [...]

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 [...]