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: Stiefvater kicks off  The Scorpio Races (Scholastic 2011) with one of the most attention-grabbing sentences of the year: “It was the first of November and so, today, someone would die.” Find me one soul who could put the book down after that opening!  Stiefvater doesn’t make it any easier to stop reading after that [...]

Cindy: Do you mind if I gush? I’ve fallen in love with the Wren family. I don’t get to read as many children’s books as I do middle school and teen books so I missed What Happened on Fox Street, the prequel to Mo Wren, Lost and Found (Harper/Balzer & Bray 2011). Readers can easily [...]

Lynn: I’m reading for Newbery this year so I’ve gifted myself with only an occasional upper YA book and most of them have been on audio.  Few have shaken me as much as Mal Peet’s newest, Life:  An Exploded Diagram (Candlewick 2011).  When brilliant narrator Simon Vance (Brilliance 2011) read the last sentence, all I [...]

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: Peer into the heart of any of us who have watched a ballet performance and you will find a secret wish to join the corps!  Those gorgeous costumes, the beautiful music, those amazing leaps that must feel like flying!  After seeing my first ballet at 8 I too fell in love with the idea [...]

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: The amazing Terri Windling conceived the idea of Bordertown in 1986, invited some amazing writers to contribute stories and together they created a place that took on a life of its own in the imagination of scores of readers.   The 4 anthologies and 3 novels about that world included the work of writers such [...]

Lynn: Long-time readers of Bookends will remember that I am not a big fan of verse novels or of sad books.  So you are probably surprised to see me leading off a review of this door-stopper of a verse novel about an immensely famous disaster.  I’m pretty surprised myself but every so often a book [...]

Lynn: It is only fair to warn you – if you have deadlines, important obligations or responsibilities, don’t start The Name of the Star (Penguin/Putnam 2011)!  I guarantee that once you start reading, you will set aside everything else.  Damn the deadlines, full speed ahead!  I won’t disclose all the major tasks I ignored but [...]

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 [...]