This week on hbook.com… The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1 movie review November’s Nonfiction Notes: social change, how things work, indigenous cultures, geography and maps, medicine and the human body Reviews of the Week: Picture Book: A Perfectly Messed-Up Story by Patrick McDonnell Fiction: Nuts to You by Lynne Rae Perkins Nonfiction: Little Melba and Her Big […]
Archives for November 2014
Readinvent this book
November 28, 2014 by 1 Comment
The urge to write in your books never really goes away, does it? For the older generation, it manifests as underlining and annotating. For the younger crowd, it might be taking attendance for a pretend classroom in your Lion King book during naptime. Maybe. Possibly. I definitely wouldn’t know, because I was a respectful, rule-following […]
#HBWhoSaidIt? quotes
November 28, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Every day in November we’re tweeting (from @HornBook) a quote about the creative process, by a children’s author or illustrator. Can you guess who said it? Click the hashtag #HBWhoSaidIt? for the latest tweets. See all “Who Said It?” quotes and their sources below. 11/3: “When I’m not writing well, I can barely remember what […]
Review of Little Melba and Her Big Trombone
November 26, 2014 by 2 Comments
Little Melba and Her Big Trombone by Katheryn Russell-Brown; illus. by Frank Morrison Primary Lee & Low 40 pp. 7/14 978-1-60060-898-8 $18.95 g From the time she was a little girl, Melba Liston loved music, especially the jazz music that surrounded her while she was growing up, first in Kansas City and then in Los […]
Review of Nuts to You
November 25, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Nuts to You by Lynne Rae Perkins; illus. by the author Intermediate Greenwillow 260 pp. 8/14 978-0-06-009275-7 $16.99 e-book ed. 978-0-06-226220-2 $8.99 Jed the squirrel’s odyssey begins dramatically when he is captured by a hawk and carried far away from his community. Using an “ancient squirrel defensive martial art,” he escapes and so begins his […]
Some people smarter than I
November 25, 2014 by 6 Comments
While putting my thoughts back in to fully bake–just kidding, I’ve ditched that recipe–I wanted to share some of the valuable links people provided in the comments to my last post and on Facebook. And let me say again how grateful I am for your bearing with me. I think a lot about what it […]
Elizabeth, Queen of the Seas
November 25, 2014 by 2 Comments
Since Brian Floca won the Caldecott last year for Locomotive, you can bet this year’s committee will be taking a look at his 2014 picture book. Written by long-distance swimmer Lynne Cox, this is a factual account of a particularly incorrigible elephant seal and the Christchurch, New Zealand, community that eventually made way for her. […]
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1 movie review
November 25, 2014 by Leave a Comment
The team behind The Hunger Games film adaptations gets it. With plenty of explosions and covert operations to draw from in Suzanne Collins’s source material, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1 (Lionsgate Films, November 2014; PG-13) could have been just an action movie. Instead, the filmmakers’ decision to split the book into two movies allows […]
Last adolescent lit class
November 25, 2014 by 15 Comments
For our last class, students are reading The Fault in Our Stars, which I offer as a “dessert book” after their hard work this term, and also as a comparison love story to Eleanor and Park from our second week. The class will also read Katrina and Rachel’s take on “What Makes a Good Love […]
Books mentioned in the November 2014 issue of Nonfiction Notes from the Horn Book
November 24, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Social change Captured History series Burgan, Michael Tank Man: How a Photograph Defined China’s Protest Movement Gr. 4–6 64 pp. Capstone/Compass Point 2014 Library binding ISBN 978-0-7565-4731-8 Paperback ISBN 978-0-7565-4787-5 Nardo, Don Hitler in Paris: How a Photograph Shocked a World at War Gr. 4–6 64 pp. Capstone/Compass Point 2014 Library binding ISBN 978-0-7565-4733-2 Paperback […]
