Booklist Online: Book Reviews from the American Library Association

Cindy: We haven’t gotten over our fall fascination with the National Parks and so this week for Nonfiction Monday we are headed to California to explore the mighty redwoods. According to Redwoods (Roaring Brook/Flashpoint, 2009) since 1850 and the advent of large-scale logging “more than 95% of the original redwood forests have been destroyed. [...]

Lynn: We are having a stretch of unusually warm sunny days. Our gray Michigan winter will be here soon though. To help get ready we have two charming books that celebrate wintry fun.
One of our new favorites is Waiting for Winter by Sebastian Meschenmoser (Kane Miller, 2009). Deer tells Squirrel that [...]

Lynn: When PBS aired The National Parks: America’s Best Idea in September I was glued to the television. I had my popcorn and I sat for six glorious nights marveling at what I was seeing and hearing. In true librarian fashion, I had checked out a copy of the accompanying book ahead [...]

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 and Lynn: Bookends thanks Nonfiction Monday for allowing us to host this week. On Mondays, many bloggers in the kidlitosphere review stellar nonfiction titles for children and teens. Bookmark the Nonfiction Monday website so you can find each Monday’s host, or volunteer to host yourself. Any bloggers who have a Nonfiction Monday post for [...]

Cindy: Biome research never looked so gorgeous as it does in Life in the Boreal Forest (Henry Holt, 2009). My sixth graders know this biome as the “tiaga” but Guiberson references that alternate name for this important ecosystem. The boreal forest covers most of the Northern Hemisphere and shelters so many creatures, many of which [...]

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
everything it touches….
smells like butter,
tastes like [...]

Lynn: Jerry Pinkney’s splendid new book, The Lion and the Mouse (Little, Brown, Sept. 2009) may be wordless but anyone who reads it will be using a lot of words such as gorgeous, stunning, evocative, and Caldecott. This adaptation of the familiar Aesop fable clearly proves that storytelling with both power and nuance can be [...]

Cindy: Big and Small, Room for All (Tundra, 2009) is a concept book for the small guys that is big on idea and even bigger on execution. It was a starred review that sent me on a search of my public library for this title. Lynn and I agree that the sweet watercolor cover art is reminiscent [...]

Cindy: I’ve wanted to write about this book all spring, but kept rereading it and finding new treasures so I hadn’t handed it over to Lynn. Finally, the bright orioles feeding on my oranges on my deck rails prompted me to get moving on sharing this book. The Cuckoo’s Haiku (Candlewick, 2009) is a tribute [...]