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Cindy: Not at my house, it’s not. The tree is up (but not decorated) and nothing is hung by the chimney with care. I’m a little behind in my holiday decorating this year. Fortunately, there are Christmas books to add some holiday cheer to my home and for us to recommend for your collections or [...]

Lynn: It’s waaay too early to begin making lists but Balloons Over Broadway:  The True Story of the Puppeteer of Macy’s Parade (Houghton 2011) is already one of my favorites for this year.  First there is the fascinating story of how the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade came to have its signature giant balloons.  Then there [...]

Lynn: Halloween is a BIG deal with our focus group despite the current politically correct efforts in our local school to homogenize it.  The boys start planning their costumes the minute the first leaf falls and have lofty schemes for decorating the front of my house this year.  They also love to cook so when [...]

Lynn: Murphy opens Truce (Scholastic 2009) with a quote from Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, “What would happen, I wonder, if the armies suddenly and simultaneously went on strike and said some other method must be found of settling the dispute?” In the course of his research on The Great War, Murphy [...]

Cindy: Full disclosure. I’m a big-time gingerbread fan. My kitchen is decorated with them and I bake masses of them every year. So, it was only natural for me to want to taste The Gingerbread Pirates (Candlewick, 2009) and I’m happy to report that the book is a real treat! Jim and his mother are [...]

Lynn: Biologist David Ginsburg had a dilemma. He was researching in Antarctica where it was summer. How could he celebrate Hanukkah when it never got dark? As David dove into the dark freezing water to study the sea urchins he was there to research, that question stayed in his mind. Just before he had to [...]

Cindy: I came home a few weeks ago to find a wild turkey strutting through my front yard. I frequently have to slow down and wait for a flock to saunter across the road on my way to work, but that was the first one to walk my garden path. Jim Arnosky’s new picture book, [...]

Cindy: This time of year makes me really miss my public library days. Halloween storytimes were so much fun. Sally Walker’s new Halloween pour-quoi tale, Druscilla’s Halloween (Carolrhoda, 2009) offers an explanation for how witches came to ride brooms. Aging Druscilla can no longer quietly sneak up on children by tiptoe to scare them–her knees [...]

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 [...]

Cindy: Poetry and collage art combine for a colorful celebration of the seasons in Red Sings from Treetops (Houghton, 2009). What’s not to love? It’s summer, so I’ll focus there. A bright yellow sun fills half a page of a summer picnic on a dock.     In SUMMER, White clinks in drinks. Yellow melts [...]