Booklist Online: More than 130,000 book reviews for librarians, book groups, and book lovers - from the trusted experts at the American Library Association

Cindy: Paper or plastic? We are all familiar with that question, but I wasn’t familiar with the female inventor who gave us the machine to make a paper grocery bag. In The Bag! Margaret Knight Wraps It Up (Tundra 2011) is a delightful picture book biography of a little known inspiring woman. The book opens [...]

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: Eleven-year-old Suzanna Snow has a busy schedule!  Her parents who manage the swanky Rosemount Hotel in Loch Harbor, New Brunswick, are intent on training Zanna to someday run the hotel.  Zanna is busy all day doing everything from fetching the day’s catch from the docks for dinner to delivering tea and helping out in [...]

Lynn: It was a sunny Saturday, March 25, 1911.  New Yorkers were enjoying the weather in the park when they heard the fire engines racing to a ten-story building housing the Triangle Waist Company.  The top three floors were ablaze in what was to be the deadliest workplace fire for 90 years.  Albert Marrin recounts [...]

Lynn: I’ve always loved biographies but I have a special admiration for the brave souls who take on much admired  – and written about – subjects.  There have been so many books about the fascinating Amelia Earhart and I started Amelia Lost:  The Life and Disappearance of Amelia Earhart (Random/Schwartz & Wade 2011) with my [...]

Cindy: I’m embarrassed to tell you how many months Lynn has been waiting for me (euphemism for “nagging me”) to read Finnikin of the Rock (Candlewick 2010). I knew it was a complex political fantasy that would take some concentration and I had planned to sink into it last summer, but life had other plans. [...]

Cindy: Full disclosure. I consider myself a pretty strong feminist and also a Barbie fan so I was intrigued by Stone’s latest nonfiction offering, The Good, the Bad, and the Barbie: A Doll’s History and Her Impact on Us (Viking, 2010). She begins the book with basic biographical information about Ruth Handler, Barbie’s “creator,” and readers who [...]

Cindy: Over at 100 Scope Notes Travis is building a gallery of book spine poems. I was fascinated by this idea and had to try it out. Since this is Women’s History Month I decided to build on that and my love of storytelling. Here’s my found poem, “Every Girl Tells a Story.” Read down [...]

Lynn: I just want to say up front that I’m starting a new campaign to make this book required reading for every teenage girl before she gets her driver’s license. In the Driver’s Seat (Zest Books, 2009) begins with this introduction, “This book will elevate you from clueless newbie to a total car star who [...]