Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson Intermediate, Middle School Paulsen/Penguin 328 pp. 8/14 978-0-399-25251-8 $16.99 g Here is a memoir-in-verse so immediate that readers will feel they are experiencing the author’s childhood right along with her. It starts out somewhat slowly, with Woodson relying on others’ memories to relate her (1963) birth and infancy in […]
Review of Because They Marched: The People’s Campaign for Voting Rights That Changed America
October 29, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Because They Marched: The People’s Campaign for Voting Rights That Changed America by Russell Freedman Middle School Holiday 83 pp. 8/14 978-0-8234-2921-9 $20.00 e-book ed. 978-0-8234-3263-9 $20.00 With characteristically clear prose sprinkled liberally with primary source quotes and carefully selected photographs, Freedman documents the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery march that featured the horrific Bloody Sunday confrontation between […]
Horn BOO! 2014
October 29, 2014 by 1 Comment
Something wicked this way comes with our annual selection of “spooktacular” new books for Halloween, with reviews written by the Horn Book staff. Ready, Steady, Ghost! by Elizabeth Baguley, illus. by Marion Lindsay Preschool, Primary Disney-Hyperion 32 pp. 8/14 978-1-4231-8039-5 $16.99 g Leave castle-haunting to the bigger ghosts; little ghost Gilbert longs to find “a […]
Review of The Cabinet of Curiosities: 36 Tales Brief & Sinister
October 28, 2014 by Leave a Comment
The Cabinet of Curiosities: 36 Tales Brief & Sinister by Stefan Bachmann, Katherine Catmull, Claire Legrand, and Emma Trevayne; illus. by Alexander Jansson Middle School Greenwillow 488 pp. 6/14 978-0-06-233105-2 $16.99 Four “curators” — Bachmann, Catmull, Legrand, and Trevayne — travel to lands peregrine and outré to fill their Cabinet of Curiosities museum, sending back […]
Review of Bow-Wow’s Nightmare Neighbors
October 27, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Bow-Wow’s Nightmare Neighbors by Mark Newgarden and Megan Montague Cash; illus. by the authors Preschool Porter/Roaring Brook 64 pp. 9/14 978-1-59643-640-4 $17.99 g Bow-Wow is back in this fanciful wordless follow-up to Bow-Wow Bugs a Bug (rev. 7/07). This time, the stalwart canine sets out to retrieve his stolen doggy bed from the ornery ghost […]
From The Guide: Folklore (and Fakelore)
October 24, 2014 by Leave a Comment
In her article “Folklore vs. Fakelore, the Epic Battle,” Jane Yolen rejects the derision of “fake folklore,” tracing the tangled and not-so-folky histories of many tales we think of as folklore. Whether they’re straight abridgments, tamed retellings, or silly twists on well-known tales, the following books, all recommended in the spring and fall 2014 issues […]
Review of Strike! The Farm Workers’ Fight for Their Rights
October 22, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Strike! The Farm Workers’ Fight for Their Rights by Larry Dane Brimner Intermediate, Middle School Calkins Creek/Boyds Mills 172 pp. 10/14 978-1-59078-997-1 $16.95 Brimner turns his attention from one part of the 1960s — the civil rights movement in the South (Black & White) — to another, a parallel movement among migrant farm workers in […]
Review of Into the Grey
October 21, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Into the Grey by Celine Kiernan Middle School, High School Candlewick 295 pp. 8/14 978-0-7636-7061-0 $16.99 e-book ed. 978-0-7636-7409-0 $16.99 When their home burns down, twin teens Patrick and Dominick move with their family to the shabby seaside cottage where they usually spend summer holidays. Almost at once, Pat sees that Dom is being haunted […]
Review of 100 Sideways Miles
October 14, 2014 by Leave a Comment
100 Sideways Miles by Andrew Smith High School Simon 277 pp. 9/14 978-1-4424-4495-9 $17.99 g e-book ed. 978-1-4424-4497-3 $10.99 High schooler Finn Easton has unusual scars on his back. Finn’s “emoticons” — so-called because they look like a colon, vertical slash, colon — are the result of a freak accident in which a dead horse […]
Review of Remy and Lulu
October 13, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Remy and Lulu by Kevin Hawkes; illus. by the author with miniatures by Hannah E. Harrison Primary Knopf 40 pp. 9/14 978-0-449-81085-9 $17.99 Library ed. 978-0-449-81087-3 $20.99 g e-book ed. 978-0-449-81089-7 $10.99 Lulu, a lithe and clever little Parisian dog, used to live with a “great portrait painter,” but now she’s homeless. Remy, a hirsute […]
