Publications about books for children and young adults
Susan Dove Lempke is a Horn Book reviewer and assistant library director for youth programs and technology for the Niles Public Library District in Illinois.
Pinned by Sharon G. Flake Middle School, High School Scholastic 231 pp. 10/12 978-0-545-05718-9 $17.99 e-book ed. 978-0-545-46984-5 $17.99 Ninth-grader Autumn is great at some things — wrestling, for one; cooking, for another. Reading is not one of her skills, due in part to multiple moves during her early childhood and parents who also don’t [...]
What’s the magic word? These days many children would answer, “Expelliarmus!” or some other Harry Potter-ism, but for generations before this the magic word has always been “please.” And yet anyone who works with children regularly can attest to the fact that quite a lot of them don’t seem familiar with that magic word, or [...]
Every Thing on It by Shel Silverstein; illus. by the author Primary, Intermediate | Harper/HarperCollins | 202 pp. 9/11 | 978-0-06-199816-4 | $19.99 | Library ed. 978-0-06-199817-1 | $20.89 Posthumously published works are sometimes weak, but this collection of 140-plus poems is every bit as good as Silverstein’s earlier poetry collections, beginning with the now-classic Where the Sidewalk [...]
It doesn’t take long when working in a bookstore or a public library to realize that many parents are after one thing in a picture book—they want it to make their child better. Parents want children who are polite, cooperative, and kind. They want them to be good listeners who easily relinquish the eventually embarrassing [...]
“I need a poem to go with a unit on diseases.” “I need a poem about respecting other people’s property.” “I need a poem for a lesson I’m doing on invertebrates.” “Where are your poetry books about personal hygiene?” Upon hearing such requests posed by education students and teachers, a librarian’s first thought might be, [...]
