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Lynn: One of the reasons I love to travel is discovering the differences in our world:  sights and sounds, food, architecture, customs, cultures and even the small details of everyday life.  But just as fascinating are the delightful similarities that link us all and sometimes those are some of the best memories of a trip.  [...]

Cindy and Lynn: We are in the holiday spirit and are avoiding our own holiday preparations to prepare a gift for our Bookends readers. We have assembled an annotated list of recent books that would make great gifts for young readers this holiday season. It is organized by broad age level from preschool through high [...]

Cindy: We attended our state school library conference (Michigan Association for Media in Education) this week. Lynn and I presented our annual list of our favorite books of the year. We provided two hour-long booktalk presentations to over 150 school librarians. One session was devoted to fiction and the other featured nonfiction, graphic novels and [...]

Cindy and Lynn: We interrupt our regularly scheduled book reviews with this good news: We were recently interviewed about the Bookends Blog by Aaron Mead over at Children’s Books and Reviews. Aaron and his wife, Angela, have the goal of “helping adults find great children’s books” and use their blog to report on books they [...]

Cindy: The hunt for holiday gifts has begun in earnest, and our teen BBYA club members have long lists that include books that they want Santa to deliver. Our group is so big this year that we’ve begun dividing them into two groups for more discussion opportunity at our meetings. Last week I had the [...]

Lynn: Ok – it is long past time for a rant. I’m sad and irritable this week but I’ve been grumbling for months about this issue and it is time to RANT! A listserv that I have long subscribed to is being ravaged by a dreadful disease. No I don’t mean H1N1, I mean Librarianship [...]

Cindy and Lynn: The best-selling first six-word memoir book, Not Quite What I Was Planning, has spawned the publication of this all-teen entry collection. When that first book published, we started thinking about six-word booktalks, but never got around to writing more than a few of them: “We have more ideas than time” (6 words!) [...]

Cindy: Spring Break is drawing nigh for me and the most agonizing part (besides swim suit shopping) is selecting the books to pack! I spend far more time choosing my reading material than my accessories–and I am all about jewelry. Now, some books I have to take to keep up with Lynn for the blog [...]

Cindy and Lynn: Recently on YALSA-BK listserv there was a request for suggestions from a librarian who wanted a list of “Clean Vampire” novels. Now, we appreciate the efforts to satiate the Stephenie Meyer Twilight fans and are working hard to do that ourselves, but really, clean vampire stories? It’s our feeling that if you [...]