Publications about books for children and young adults
Betty Carter, an independent consultant, is professor emerita of children’s and young adult literature at Texas Woman’s University.
In last week’s Notes from the Horn Book, Roger interviewed author/illustrator Jonathan Bean about DIY and his latest book, Building Our House. Reviewer Betty Carter has a sixth question for Jonathan in the January/February 2013 Horn Book Magazine. Read the starred review of Building Our House here. Betty Carter: What lessons or habits from your [...]
Building Our House by Jonathan Bean; illus. by the author Primary Farrar 48 pp. 1/13 978-0-374-38023-6 $17.99 g Drawing on childhood memories from his own family’s house construction (see author’s note), Bean creates an engaging story as well as a glimpse into a warm family setting. A little girl narrates, and her childlike voice provides [...]
Electric Ben: The Amazing Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin by Robert Byrd; illus. by the author Intermediate Dial 40 pp. 9/12 978-0-8037-3749-5 $17.99 With a jacket showing Benjamin Franklin as a cross between a mad scientist and a superhero standing amid wild lightning bolts and surrounded by all manner of electrical devices, this book [...]
Unspoken: A Story from the Underground Railroad by Henry Cole; illus. by the author Primary Scholastic 40 pp. 11/12 978-0-545-39997-5 $16.99 This wordless picture book opens with a calm scene: a quilt hangs over a rural split-rail fence. A young girl enters the scene on the next double-page spread, leading a cow and watching a [...]
Machines Go to Work in the City by William Low; illus. by the author Preschool Holt 32 pp. 6/12 978-0-8050-9050-5 $16.99 Books don’t get much better than this for machinery-loving preschoolers. Listeners are first introduced to a particular situation involving vehicles, from a garbage truck to a [...]
Penny and Her Doll by Kevin Henkes; illus. by the author Primary Greenwillow 32 pp. 8/12 978-0-06-208199-5 $12.99 Naming things, whether children, pets, or toys, is serious business, and in this follow-up to Penny and Her Song (rev. 3/12) Henkes doesn’t take that task lightly. Gram sends mouse Penny a doll: “The doll had pink [...]
The President’s Stuck in the Bathtub: Poems about the Presidents by Susan Katz; illus. by Robert Neubecker Primary, Intermediate Clarion 64 pp. 2/12 978-0-547-18221-6 $17.99 In forty-three poems, Katz gives each of our U.S. presidents their due. She concentrates on little-known facts (William McKinley taught his parrot “Yankee Doodle”) but often slips in sly political [...]
A hundred years ago, on April 15, 1912, the Titanic sank on her maiden voyage. Speaking for many, Don Brown concludes his account (see below) with these words: “Though gone from view, she remains fixed on the horizon of our imagination, where she steams endlessly, haunting us.” And for good reason. Swirling around the disaster [...]
Titanic: Voices from the Disaster by Deborah Hopkinson Intermediate, Middle School Scholastic 290 pp. 3/12 978-0-545-11674-9 $17.99 Hopkinson knows precisely what’s she doing in her coverage of the Titanic disaster: providing young readers with a basic introduction to the event without overdramatizing, drawing unwarranted conclusions, or prolonging the ordeal. She begins her account as the [...]
We March by Shane W. Evans; illus. by the author Preschool, Primary Porter/Roaring Brook 32 pp. 1/12 978-1-59643-539-1 $16.99 Many young children know there was a march on Washington a long time ago and that Martin Luther King Jr. gave a famous speech that day. Some know why the march took place; fewer still know [...]
