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: Before the last of the skating ice melts, be sure to skate on over to your local library or bookstore to get your hands on Bunnies on Ice (Roaring Brook/Neal Porter 2013). Bunny comes from an ice skating family of bunnies but she proclaims herself to be a champion. One of the things a [...]

Cindy: Browsing the new book shelf at the public library usually means hauling home a stack of books and with luck finding a gem. In this case I found a new nonfiction series for young elementary school readers about endangered animals. I brought home Brown Bear by Suzi Eszterhas (Frances Lincoln 2012). The cover of a [...]

Cindy: What is your favorite season? I always have a hard time choosing and A Year With Friends (Abrams/Appleseed 2012) makes it even harder. Each double page spread features a month with charming paneled illustrations that include a young girl and and her dog or a boy and his cat enjoying the special time the [...]

Lynn:  Sometimes a book goes right to my heart and takes me right back to my childhood.  Twelve Kinds of Ice (Houghton 2012) is that kind of book.  This is the story of one of the great pleasures of winter and how one family makes that pleasure something truly special. The First Ice The first [...]

Cindy: I just picked my first tomatoes of the summer from my small deck garden so Secrets of the Garden: Food Chains and the Food Web in our Backyard (Knopf 2012) is perfect reading this week. The illustrated story of a family planning, planting and harvesting a vegetable garden is heartwarming but it so much [...]

Cindy: Here in Michigan we often have to wait until May for true Spring to arrive, but we are getting an early taste this year and so we’ve put away our winter books and our mittens and are moving on. If we get snow dumped on us in a few weeks, perhaps we’ll reconsider, but for [...]

Lynn: Cindy and I have two cozy picture books that are perfect for sleepy bedtimes or warm cuddles on a snowy day.  I’m leading off with Denise Fleming’s wonderful Sleepy, Oh So Sleepy (Holt 2010).  Each two-page spread shows a different baby animal drifting off to sleep, safely snuggled next to a parent.  The simple [...]

Cindy: There’s nothing more fun than catching the first snowflake on your tongue or admiring one on your mitten, unless it’s reading The Story of Snow: The Science of Winter’s Wonder (Chronicle, 2009). Cassino provides clear text explaining the formation of snow crystals and snowflakes with stunning photographs of nature’s creation. Elementary teachers will delight [...]

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 snow is coming [...]