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:  Aronson’s opening is a wonderful hook.  “Dad, I found a fossil,” says 9-year-old Matthew Berger to his anthropologist father.  In The Skull in the Rock:  How a Scientist, a Boy, and Google Earth Opened a New Window on Human Origins (National Geographic 2012).  Lee assumed Matt’s find was a common bone like an antelope [...]

Lynn:  Who doesn’t love a good scandal?  Hey – history is full of them and even scientists have joined in with their share of bad behavior.  History is about the stories of people’s lives and I’ve always been happy to use those stories to get kids interested in what has come before.  The Scientific Rivalries [...]

Lynn:  I want to caution readers that if you are, as I am, susceptible to robot love you might want to use care with The Might Mars Rovers:  The Incredible Adventures of Spirit and Opportunity (Houghton 2012).  Yes, this latest volume in the stellar Scientists in Field series does what it always does with such [...]

Lynn:  Revered writer (by me anyway) Phillip Hoose turns his attention to the bird world again with an amazing book about an equally amazing type of bird, the Red Knot, and more specifically a very special individual bird – B95.  Moonbird:  A Year On the Wind With the Great Survivor B95 (Farrar 2012) introduces readers [...]

Cindy: Photosynthesis never looked so beautiful! Ocean Sunlight: How Tiny Plants Feed the Seas (Scholastic/Blue Sky 2012) is a new offering from the dynamic duo of children’s author-illustrator Molly Bang and MIT professor Penny Chisholm who brought us Living Sunlight (2009). Just how does the ocean produce half of the oxygen we breathe every day? [...]

Lynn:  I know how long everyone’s “To Read” list is but here’s one that needs to jump the queue to the top of your lists!  Bomb:  The Race to Build – and Steal – The World’s Most Dangerous Weapon (Roaring Brook 2012) is my favorite nonfiction book this year.  I frequently have several books going [...]

Cindy: When Lynn and I read and posted about Martha Brooks’ Queen of Hearts a year ago, little did we know that this story set in a tuberculosis sanitorium would be the first of many TB books that would come our way this year. There was The Humming Room by Ellen Potter where a young [...]

Lynn:  Have you ever wondered what all that cheeping, twittering and singing is all about?  More importantly, have you thought to encourage the children around you to wonder about that too?  Bird Talk:  What Birds are Saying and Why (Roaring Brook 2012) is a terrific introduction not only to the fascinating world of bird communication [...]

Lynn:  Pandas are so familiar to us today that it is hard to realize that in 1934 hardly anyone in the West had ever seen one.  We wait in long queues to see them in zoos, watch them on live cams and the World Wildlife Federation has adopted its image as their symbol.  The fascinating [...]

Lynn:  I’m always a sucker for books about rescued wildlife but even the most indifferent of hearts will be charmed by Puffling Patrol (Lee & Low 2012), the latest from the award-winning Lewins.  At the end of summer, adult puffins leave their babies and and fly away to spend the winter in the northern seas.  [...]