Publications about books for children and young adults
I just watched the pilot episode of ABC’s Once Upon a Time, a dark-ish fairy-tale show from Lost’s executive producers. In the first scene, Snow White (played by Ginnifer Goodwin, Margene from Big Love) lays lies in a glass coffin, apparently dead. A kiss from her prince wakes Snow, as we know it will, and [...]
The Princess of Borscht by Leda Schubert; illus. by Bonnie Christensen Primary Porter/Roaring Brook 32 pp. 11/11 978-1-59643-515-5 $17.99 Though the book opens with Ruthie and her father at the hospital visiting Ruthie’s grandmother, laid up with pneumonia, this isn’t a coping-with-death book. Bubbe’s not failing, she’s a finagler. Unsatisfied by hospital food (“a person [...]
Greenhaven Press publishes an exhaustive number of books about contemporary social problems. Series titles include: At Issue, Issues That Concern You, Social Issues Firsthand, Issues on Trial, Current Controversies, Opposing Viewpoints, Introducing Issues with Opposing Viewpoints, Global Viewpoints, Perspectives on Modern World History, etc. Topics cover everything from teenage pregnancy to drug abuse, human trafficking, [...]
Halloween’s not just for little boys and ghouls. Here are some funny, eerie, and downright creepy titles to scare up readers of all ages. The goofiest of the group is David LaRochelle’s picture book The Haunted Hamburger and Other Ghostly Stories. Ghost siblings Franny and Frankie demand a story before bed. Of course, one is [...]
Dear Tyra: As host of America’s Next Top Model, you’ve given many well-deserved dressings down (literally) to the overeager, overdone girls on the runway. “Remove that belt,” you might say; “Take off those shoulder-duster earrings;” “That teased-out hair? Slick it back into a low ponytail. Now you look like a model.” And now you look [...]
“Nothing in Rosewood is ever really over,” reads the first page of Twisted (Harper Teen, July), the ninth book in Sara Shepard’s Pretty Little Liars series. No kidding. Back in 2006, the Horn Book Guide’s review of the kick-off volume refers to Pretty Little Liars as the “first book in a planned series of four” [...]
I can’t draw. You wouldn’t want me on your Pictionary team. I also have a fifteen-month-old, so tushy humor is big right now. For these reasons, Brian Snyder and Alexis Moniello’s Everything Butt Art at the Zoo (Madbrook, May) caught my eye. “What can you draw with a butt? Everything!” Starting with a flattened-looking W [...]
While perusing Cliques by Toney Allman, part of Lucent Books’ long-running Hot Topics series for middle-schoolers, I noticed this poor girl, presumably being teased about her hair. “Why is it always the redhead?” thought I. From Anne Shirley (and doesn’t it look like this little lady’s ready to break her slate over somebody’s head?), to [...]
> After some fierce competition—including a first-round heartbreaker storming back from the dead!—Jonathan Stroud’s The Ring of Solomon won School Library Journal’s Battle of the Kids’ Books. To get the inside scoop, we caught up with Battle Commentator Jonathan Hunt. First things first: Did the best man win? I certainly think you can make a [...]
Laurel Snyder, probably best known for her middle-grade novels Up and Down the Scratchy Mountains, or, The Search for a Suitable Princess, Any Which Wall, and Penny Dreadful, presents a Judaism-themed board book that’s preschooler-perfect. Nosh, Schlep, Schluff: BabYiddish records a day in the life of one young tot (could be either gender; one of [...]
