Publications about books for children and young adults
From the May/June 2012 issue of The Horn Book Magazine: Jennifer Brabander asks The President’s Stuck in the Bathtub author Susan Katz about writing presidential poetry. Read the full review of The President’s Stuck in the Bathtub here. Jennifer Brabander: Which president was the hardest to write a poem about? Susan Katz: James Monroe. The [...]
The President’s Stuck in the Bathtub: Poems about the Presidents by Susan Katz; illus. by Robert Neubecker Primary, Intermediate Clarion 64 pp. 2/12 978-0-547-18221-6 $17.99 In forty-three poems, Katz gives each of our U.S. presidents their due. She concentrates on little-known facts (William McKinley taught his parrot “Yankee Doodle”) but often slips in sly political [...]
A Confusion of Princes by Garth Nix Middle School, High School Harper/HarperCollins 337 pp. 5/12 978-0-06-009694-6 $17.99 Library ed. 978-0-06-009695-3 $18.89 g Nix’s gaming-inspired, sci-fi fantasy is a pleasing mix of high-adventure space drama, total bunkum (e.g., “it’s functioning on the tertiary backup level, without a holo…”), and wry, boyish charm. Khemri’s coming-of-age story begins [...]
Animal Masquerade by Marianne Dubuc; trans. from the French by Yvette Ghione; illus. by the author Preschool, Primary Kids Can 120 pp. 3/12 978-1-55453-782-2 $16.95 For kids who never tire of driving one joke into the ground, this is the perfect book—and for their adults, there are enough surprises to make that one joke tolerable [...]
From the May/June 2012 issue of The Horn Book Magazine: Roger asks Code Name Verity author Elizabeth Wein about writing books and flying airplanes. Read the full review of Code Name Verity here. Roger Sutton: You’re a pilot—what has flying taught you about writing? Elizabeth Wein: As a student pilot, the lengthy “outside aircraft checks” [...]
Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein High School Hyperion 337 pp. 5/12 978-1-4231-5219-4 $16.99 g e-book ed. 978-1-4231-5325-2 $16.99 Wein’s exceptional—downright sizzling—abilities as a writer of historical adventure fiction are spectacularly evident in this taut, captivating story of two young women, spy and pilot, during World War II. Wein gives us the story in two [...]
Green by Laura Vaccaro Seeger; illus. by the author Preschool Porter/Roaring Brook 40 pp. 3/12 978-1-59643-397-7 $16.99 Lemons Are Not Red (rev. 1/05) was a concept book about color, so you might think this offering on various shades of a single color would be simpler. But Seeger once again sets up a challenge for herself, [...]
The Hero of Little Street by Gregory Rogers; illus. by the author Primary Porter/Roaring Brook 40 pp. 3/12 978-0-59643-729-6 $17.99 g The same bulb-headed boy who was chased through Elizabethan London in The Boy, the Bear, the Baron, the Bard (rev. 11/04) is time-traveling again, this time to seventeenth-century Delft, an important center of the [...]
Titanic: Voices from the Disaster by Deborah Hopkinson Intermediate, Middle School Scholastic 290 pp. 3/12 978-0-545-11674-9 $17.99 Hopkinson knows precisely what’s she doing in her coverage of the Titanic disaster: providing young readers with a basic introduction to the event without overdramatizing, drawing unwarranted conclusions, or prolonging the ordeal. She begins her account as the [...]
No Crystal Stair: A Documentary Novel of the Life and Work of Lewis Michaux, Harlem Bookseller by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson; illus. by R. Gregory Christie Middle School, High School Carolrhoda Lab 188 pp. 2/12 978-0-7613-6169-5 $17.95 e-book ed. 978-0-7613-8727-5 $12.95 Inspired by Marcus Garvey and the drive to make a difference, Lewis Michaux opened the [...]
