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: I really shouldn’t reveal how clay-like my reviewer’s feet are but I seem to confess my failings in this blog all the time.   This clearly has to stop but before I talk about Martha Brook’s new book, Queen of Hearts (Farrar 2011), I need to say that I usually dislike books about people [...]

Lynn: “Can a girl get a job fighting death,” asks 16-year-old Prudence Galewski in her diary.  It is 1906 and Prudence sees death everywhere in New York City, wonders how illness occurs and how it can be conquered.  Deadly (S&S/Atheneum 2011) is a riveting historical novel told in the diary entries of a young girl [...]

Lynn: If “ewww gross” is your idea of high praise then How They Croaked:  The Awful Ends of the Awfully Famous (Walker, March 2011) is the book for you!  The opening pages issue this warning: Warning: If You Don’t Have the Guts for Gore, Do Not Read This Book I’d advise the squeamish among us [...]

Lynn: As a dedicated escapist reader I routinely run the other way from “disease” books. I made an exception for Drums, Girls and Dangerous Pie (Scholastic 2005), Sonnenblick’s wonderful book about Steven Alper, his tumultuous 8th grade year and his little brother Jeffrey’s battle with leukemia. That exemption continues for After Ever After (Scholastic 2010), [...]

Lynn: In 1827 a music teacher and his young student, Ferdinand Hiller, paid their final respects to the dead musical genius, Ludwig van Beethoven. Hiller clipped a precious lock of Beethoven’s hair and preserved it carefully in a wooden locket. In 1995 in Tucson, Arizona, two new owners of that same locket carefully opened it [...]

Lynn: We humans seem to have a genetic link to stories. Stories connect us to each other and to our history. They beguile us, comfort us and distract us. Stories are told at bedtime, in a tent with a flashlight and at family celebrations linking generations. Authors have explored the power of story as a [...]