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’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 [...]

Cindy: Alex Flinn’s Beastly and A Kiss in Time are very popular in my middle school libraries and her latest romance featuring lesser known fairy tales, Cloaked (HarperTeen 2011) is sure to be as well. Let’s start with The Elves and the Shoemaker: Johnny is a shoe-repair expert working in a small shop in a [...]

Lynn: It doesn’t matter if you are a storytime librarian, classroom teacher or sleepy parent – Interrupting Chicken (Candlewick, 2010) will have you matching giggles and gaffaws with your audience. We all know the child in this story. He/she simply cannot listen to a story without bursting in to comment, announce the obvious or shout [...]

Lynn: Lovers of fairy-tale twists and library-related stories – have we got a book for you! The Grimm Legacy (Penguin/Putnam 2010) is the sort of clever charming book perfectly designed to curl up with at the end of a long frustrating day. It is balm for a battered soul. If only I could distill and [...]

Cindy: I have a college-age reading buddy who recently said to me, “I just wish I could find a job that would pay me to do nothing but read fairy tale revisions all day.” I’m with Audrey. Maybe we could both find a fairy godmother who would grant that wish. This comment was prompted by [...]

Lynn: If we were as clever as Marilyn Singer, we’d write this blog in reversible lines in honor of her wonderful new book, Mirror Mirror: A Book of Reversible Verse (Penguin/Dutton, March 2010). There is a reason she is a writer and we are reviewers though so we won’t try. I’ll resort to saying that [...]

Lynn: We first met Rapunzel and Jack as they joined forces to clean up the mess at Gothel’s Reach in Rapunzel’s Revenge (Bloomsbury 2008). The main focus shifts to Jack in this second volume, Calamity Jack (Bloomsbury, 2010), and he wants to impress Rapunzel and show his mother that he is more than a scheming [...]

Cindy: Last year Gaiman gave us a boy named Bod. This year, “there was a boy called Odd, and there was nothing strange or unusual about that, not in that time or place.” Odd meant the tip of the blade and it was a lucky name.” But like most folktale heroes, Odd is not lucky, [...]

Lynn: Here in Michigan we have two glorious weeks left before the school bell rings the day after Labor Day. Many families are wedging in one more trip and we’d like to remind everyone of a terrific way to while away the miles, avoid squabbles and enjoy something together. Listen to an audio book! I [...]

Lynn: Jerry Pinkney’s splendid new book, The Lion and the Mouse (Little, Brown, Sept. 2009) may be wordless but anyone who reads it will be using a lot of words such as gorgeous, stunning, evocative, and Caldecott. This adaptation of the familiar Aesop fable clearly proves that storytelling with both power and nuance can be [...]