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: I love when I find a nonfiction book that does something new. Music informational books are few and far between considering how much music means to teens. Of course, by the time you purchase and process a Justin Bieber biography, it seems there’s a new kid on the block so it’s hard to keep [...]

Cindy: When my oldest daughter first took guitar lessons, she struggled as the instructor made her pluck out the notes for ”Mary Had a Little Lamb.” My brother was disdainful of that method. He said, “I can teach her three chords and she’ll be able to play any Bob Dylan song she wants, and what more would she [...]

Lynn: “It was as if I didn’t exist without music,” Leonard Bernstein.  It is Berenstein’s intense purpose that is the focal point of Rubin’s outstanding new biography, Music Was IT!:  Young Leonard Bernstein (Charlesbridge 2011). Teens with a similar driving passion in their lives will discover a strong connection to the incredibly gifted young man [...]

Cindy: I usually hate celebrity picture books and I’m not usually wishy-washy on book opinions, but One Love (Chronicle Books 2011) has me dithering and looking for other opinions. Can we talk? Full disclosure: I am a Bob Marley fan. I have a tiki bar in my back yard with a 4-foot carved statue of Marley [...]

Cindy: Young readers who hear music in street noises or other environmental sounds will appreciate this look at the formative years of guitar legend, Jimi Hendrix. The first thing readers may notice about  Jimi: Sounds Like a Rainbow (Clarion, 2010) is the stunning artwork by Javaka Steptoe. He walked in the legendary steps of Jimi through the old [...]

Cindy: Lynn raved about Countdown (Scholastic, 2010) early this spring, as did many other bloggers and reviewers so I’ve been eager to read it but we were waiting for its publication to discuss it further. I was not disappointed. If you’ve not read it yet, hunt it down and do so. If you’ve not bought [...]

Lynn: In 1827 a music teacher and his young student, Ferdinand Hiller, paid their final respects to the dead musical genius, Ludwig van Beethoven. Hiller clipped a precious lock of Beethoven’s hair and preserved it carefully in a wooden locket. In 1995 in Tucson, Arizona, two new owners of that same locket carefully opened it [...]

Lynn: Tell a teenager that you grew up in a house that for years had one TV and one radio and they will look at you as if you have tree roots growing out of your nose. Mark Stamaty tells it like it really was and this bright musical memoir really struck a chord with [...]

Lynn: One of the most delightful things about writing this blog is that we get packages on our porches. Even after a lot of years on committees, I haven’t gotten over the thrill of receiving a mysterious parcel from a publisher. We try not to blog books too far in advance of publication date so [...]

Cindy: I’m embarrassed by how much I didn’t know about Bob Marley. I have visited Jamaica twice, listened to his music for decades, purchased a 4-foot carved statue of him this spring to feature at our backyard tiki bar and hosted a grad party for my daughter with a Jamaican/ rasta/ reggae theme. I should [...]