Publications about books for children and young adults
Deirdre F. Baker, a reviewer for The Horn Book Magazine and the Toronto Star, teaches children’s literature at the University of Toronto. The author of Becca
at Sea (Groundwood), she is currently at work on a sequel—written in the
past tense.
The Archived by Victoria Schwab Middle School, High School Hyperion 324 pp. 1/13 978-1-4231-5731-1 $16.99 g Mackenzie is a “Keeper”; her job is to return the wakeful dead (or “Histories”) to the Archive, a repository of all human memory. Persuading the dead to return to their rightful resting place often involves kick-ass combat, but never [...]
From the September/October issue of The Horn Book Magazine: Reviewer Deirdre F. Baker asks What Came from the Stars author Gary D. Schmidt about the function of elevated language in the novel. Read the full starred review of What Came from the Stars here. Deirdre F. Baker: For the book’s fantasy elements, you hark back [...]
What Came from the Stars by Gary D. Schmidt Middle School Clarion 293 pp. 9/12 978-0-547-61213-3 $16.99 g Schmidt brings high heroic fantasy and contemporary realism together in this novel of a bereaved family. In Plymouth, Massachusetts, Tommy grieves for his mother, who died eight [...]
A Confusion of Princes by Garth Nix Middle School, High School Harper/HarperCollins 337 pp. 5/12 978-0-06-009694-6 $17.99 Library ed. 978-0-06-009695-3 $18.89 g Nix’s gaming-inspired, sci-fi fantasy is a pleasing mix of high-adventure space drama, total bunkum (e.g., “it’s functioning on the tertiary backup level, without a holo…”), and wry, boyish charm. Khemri’s coming-of-age story begins [...]
Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein High School Hyperion 337 pp. 5/12 978-1-4231-5219-4 $16.99 g e-book ed. 978-1-4231-5325-2 $16.99 Wein’s exceptional—downright sizzling—abilities as a writer of historical adventure fiction are spectacularly evident in this taut, captivating story of two young women, spy and pilot, during World War II. Wein gives us the story in two [...]
The Cabinet of Earths by Anne Nesbet Intermediate Harper/HarperCollins 260 pp. 1/12 978-0-06-196313-1 $16.99 e-book ed. 978-0-06-209919-8 $8.99 “Well! It is better to read fairy tales than to find yourself caught in them,” Nesbet’s narrator declares, a predictor of what is to be found in the subsequent pages — for Nesbet’s story is a-shimmer with [...]
When the 2010 Man Booker shortlist was announced in the UK, the Daily Telegraph ran this headline: “Philip Pullman and Philip Hensher criticise Booker Prize for including present tense novels.” In fact, what Pullman said, as he explained in an article in the Guardian, was that “the use of the present tense in fiction had [...]
