Booklist Online: Book Reviews from the American Library Association

Cindy: Lonnie Collins Motion (Lo-Co-Motion) is back in this sequel to the Coretta Scott King author honor winning Locomotion. In Peace, Locomotion (Penguin/Putnam, 2009) Lonnie continues his story of life in a foster home with Miss Edna, separated from his sister Lili, in another foster home. I like the letter format of this installment even [...]

Lynn: Marcus Jordan, star quarterback of his previous team, is the new guy in town. To make things worse, the local football team was undefeated last year and no one sees any reason to change the starting line-up. Marcus makes the team but resigns himself to working hard and riding the bench for [...]

Lynn: This quiet little masterpiece is one of my favorite books this year. When the Whistle Blows (Penguin/Philomel 2009) may be a debut novel but Slayton writes with a polished skill that many a veteran author would envy. The novel has an interesting construction - seven complete short stories that build upon each [...]

Lynn: Kristin Cashore is a gifted storyteller - one of those remarkable writers who spin a web of words that wraps around readers, capturing them completely with a tale. I’d wager my classic sf collection that every reader coming to the end of the first book, Graceling (Penguin/Dial, 2008), immediately asked when the second volume [...]

Cindy: “It’s not nice when girls die.” Ten years ago Laurie Halse Anderson gifted teen readers with her first YA novel, Speak, about a girl dealing with depression following a date rape. In Wintergirls (Penguin/Viking, 2009), Anderson is as unflinching and honest in presenting Lia, who learns on page one of chapter {001.00} that an [...]

Lynn: You could not ask for a better book to booktalk than Escape Under the Forever Sky (Chronicle, 2009)! Sit back and picture this: the Ethiopian wilderness, a thirteen-year-old American girl who has been kidnapped, escapes and with her captors right behind her, runs barefooted straight into a hidden pride of lions. After a heart-stopping [...]

Cindy: I think of this series of delightful books every August as my summer vacation winds to an end. In The Exiles (Margaret K. McElderry, 1991), the four Conroy sisters, Ruth, Naomi, Rachel, and Phoebe are excited when their parents come into an inheritance and they gleefully begin plotting how to spend their share. Their [...]

Lynn: Retold fairy tales are extremely popular in our area and it took us most of the summer to finally get Princess of the Midnight Ball (Bloomsbury 2009) away from our teens long enough to read it ourselves! As she did in Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow (Bloomsbury 2008), George shows that she [...]

Lynn: “I tried to make August last because September, and school, didn’t look good. We were not only newcomers, but we were P.K.’s - preacher’s kids. So everybody’d be gunning for us, and we’d be living in a fishbowl.” 11-year old Bob has a lot to worry about. Not only is his family new in [...]

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 [...]