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: 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 [...]

Cindy: I was excited and a little nervous when I heard there was to be a new Shel Silverstein collection. Post-humous publications often disappoint, but this one is successful. Every Thing On It (Harper 2011) has over 130 poems with his trademark line drawings, selected by his family from his archives and published her for [...]

Lynn: Ah – sibling relationships!  Ask even the shyest child if their brother/sister ever does anything annoying and stand back.  George and narrator Nancy Carpenter have mined this rich field with their charming Emma Dilemma:  Big Sister Poems (Clarion 2011).  I’m an older sister myself and this book is right on target!  (Notice I said [...]

Cindy and Lynn: 100 Scope Notes has thrown down the gauntlet and asked for five line book spine poems for National Poetry Month. We had so much fun with this last year that we couldn’t resist trying it again. With Spring Break starting today as well for our district, we were in the mood for [...]

Cindy: If you didn’t get enough haiku with our recent post about Guyku, then have we got a treat for you in Won Ton: A Cat Tale Told in Haiku (Henry Holt 2011). The story opens with cats in separate cages in an animal shelter: Gypsy on my left. Pumpkin, my right. Together, we are [...]

Cindy: Jane Yolen and Andrew Fusek Peters have collected over sixty delightful poems to read at bedtime ranging from classics to contemporary and from silly to quietly lulling in Switching on the Moon (Candlewick 2010). G. Brian Karas’ gouache, acrylic and pencil illustrations are charming and the generous book size makes it easy for parent [...]

Lynn: We choose the books we blog for a variety of reasons.  Sometimes they are of outstanding literary quality or they have solid curricular connections.  Sometimes they are books especially popular with our teens or the focus group and sometimes they are books we just loved reading.  When ALL those qualities come together you’ve got [...]

Lynn: Looking for a book of poems that will instantly engage students while demonstrating poetic form? Or are you looking for a gorgeous eye-catching picture book for story hour? Or are you looking for a book to enhance a research unit on animals? Look no further because the stunning In the Wild (Candlewick 2010) will [...]

Lynn: Why did they do it? What made a group of teenage girls accuse over 144 people of witchcraft? In the end 19 people were hanged and one man pressed to death in one small community. In her brilliant new book, Wicked Girls: A Novel of the Salem Witch Trials (Harper/Balzer + Bray 2010), Hemphill [...]

Lynn: You are all book lovers out there so I know you will understand when I say that there are some books that I just want to clutch tightly to my heart when I’ve finished them. I can hardly bear to put them down and break the reading spell. Snook Alone (Candlewick 2010) is one [...]