Review of The Dark by Lemony Snicket. From the March/April 2013 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.
From the Guide: Novels in Verse
April 18, 2013 By 1 Comment
To honor National Poetry Month in April, we’re spotlighting notable novels in verse from the past year. From illustrated lighthearted verse to historical fiction to contemporary realism, this eclectic potpourri of Horn Book Guide–recommended novels showcases the form and gives readers — from primary-age kids to older teens — good reasons to celebrate poetry. —Katrina [...]
Review of Eleanor & Park
April 17, 2013 By 4 Comments
Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell High School St. Martin’s Griffin 328 pp. 2/13 978-1-250-01257-9 $18.99 e-book ed. 978-1-250-03121-1 $9.99 It’s the start of a new school year in 1986 Omaha when sophomores Eleanor and Park meet for the first time on the bus. They are an unusual pair: she’s the new girl in town, [...]
Mitzi’s World app review
April 11, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Auryn Inc.’s seek-and-find interactive storybook app Mitzi’s World: Seek and Discover More Than 150 Details in 15 Works of Folk Art (2012), based on Deborah Raffin’s book of the same name, features a selection of “neo-naive” oil paintings by prominent folk-artist Jane Wooster Scott. Spanning the four seasons, each painting depicts a scene inspired by [...]
Review of Deadly!: The Truth About the Most Dangerous Creatures on Earth
April 10, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Deadly!: The Truth About the Most Dangerous Creatures on Earth by Nicola Davies; illus. by Neal Layton Primary, Intermediate Candlewick 64 pp. 3/13 978-0-7636-6231-8 $14.99 Readers with a taste for the grisly realism of nature will revel in the latest Davies and Layton collaboration, featuring the ways in which animals cause lasting harm or death [...]
Review of Follow Follow: A Book of Reverso Poems
April 3, 2013 By 2 Comments
Follow Follow: A Book of Reverso Poems by Marilyn Singer; illus. by Josée Masse Primary Dial 32 pp. 2/13 978-0-8037-3769-3 $16.99 g “It’s not easy,” warns Singer in a note about the “reverso,” a verse form she created and first used in Mirror Mirror (rev. 3/10); and the first poem (“Fairy Tales”) in this companion [...]
Review of Miss Moore Thought Otherwise
March 27, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Miss Moore Thought Otherwise: How Anne Carroll Moore Created Libraries for Children by Jan Pinborough; illus. by Debby Atwell Primary Houghton 40 pp. 3/13 978-0-547-47105-1 $16.99 Nowadays, Anne Carroll Moore is remembered as the fiercest of the library ladies whose influence on children’s library service and publishing was both inspirational and — sometimes — intractable. [...]
The White Bicycle
March 25, 2013 By 1 Comment
It’s always disappointing when we miss the opportunity to blow our horn for a really good book — but in this case the ARC arrived too late to review in the Magazine. Fortunately, this year’s Printz committee found it in time to award it an Honor and get it the recognition it deserves. And here’s [...]
Dragon Brush app review
March 22, 2013 By Leave a Comment
“Quite a long time ago, in a small village in ancient China, there lived a boy named Bing-Wen.” So begins Dragon Brush (Small Planet Digital, 2012), an interactive picture book app created by John Solimine and Andy Hullinger. Based on a Chinese folktale (no sources are given), the story follows a young rabbit artist, Bing-Wen, [...]
Picturing Imogen
March 20, 2013 By Leave a Comment
In the March issue of Notes from the Horn Book, in honor of Women’s History Month, I picked out some recent picture-book biographies focusing on women who left their marks on society. Another worthy offering is Imogen: The Mother of Modernism and Three Boys (Cameron + Company, December 2012) by Amy Novesky, author of the [...]
