Publications about books for children and young adults
Courage Has No Color, the True Story of the Triple Nickles: America’s First Black Paratroopers by Tanya Lee Stone Middle School, High School Candlewick 148 pp. 1/13 978-0-7636-5117-6 $24.99 e-book ed. 978-0-7636-6405-3 $24.99 “How does one survive and outlast the racism that was our daily fare at that time?” asks artist Ashley Bryan in the [...]
Etched in Clay: The Life of Dave, Enslaved Potter and Poet by Andrea Cheng; illus. by the author Intermediate, Middle School Lee & Low 143 pp. 1/13 978-1-60060-451-5 $17.95 g Readers familiar with Laban Carrick Hill and Bryan Collier’s 2011 Caldecott Honor–winning picture book Dave the Potter will appreciate Cheng’s interpretation of the man’s life [...]
Days of Blood & Starlight by Laini Taylor High School Little, Brown 517 pp. 11/12 978-0-316-13397-5 $18.99 Star-crossed lovers Karou and Akiva, torn apart by unforgivable betrayal at the end of Daughter of Smoke & Bone (rev. 11/11), are now engaged in the renewed war between the chimaera and the seraphim. Both are repulsed by [...]
Hand in Hand: Ten Black Men Who Changed America by Andrea Davis Pinkney; illus. by Brian Pinkney Intermediate, Middle School Disney-Jump at the Sun 243 pp. 10/12 978-1-4231-4257-7 $19.99 Presenting ten biographical vignettes in chronological order — Benjamin Banneker, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, A. Philip Randolph, Thurgood Marshall, Jackie Robinson, Malcolm X, [...]
My First Day by Steve Jenkins and Robin Page; illus. by Steve Jenkins Preschool, Primary Houghton 32 pp. 1/13 978-0-547-73851-2 $16.99 “What did you do on your first day — the day you were born? Probably not much” begins this book about baby animals’ first hours of life. Jenkins and Page’s simple text effectively highlights [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Review of The Man from the Land of Fandango by Margaret Mahy. From the November/December 2012 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.
One Times Square: A Century of Change at the Crossroads of the World by Joe McKendry; illus. by the author Intermediate Godine 64 pp. 9/12 978-1-56792-364-3 $19.95 You are there at the birth, the decay, and the revival of Times Square, the “crossroads of the world” for a century. McKendry (Beneath the Streets of Boston, [...]
Every Day by David Levithan Middle School, High School Knopf 325 pp. 8/12 978-0-307-93188-7 $16.99 Library ed. 978-0-375-97111-2 $19.99 e-book ed. 978-0-307-97563-8 $10.99 “A,” the narrator of Levithan’s brilliantly conceived novel, wakes up in a different sixteen-year-old’s body every morning and has to adjust to different physical characteristics, a different family, a different school, different [...]
