Book Reviews
The Bridge Home by Padma Venkatraman; read by the author Intermediate, Middle School Listening Library Rev. 1/19 4 CDs 4.55 hrs. 978-1-9848-4509-2 $38.00 Venkatraman’s memorable middle-grade and middle-school novel follows homeless children trying to survive on the streets of Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu, India. In this excellent audio...
The Miracle & Tragedy
of the Dionne Quintuplets by Sarah Miller Middle School, High School
Schwartz & Wade/Random 309 pp. 8/19 978-1-5247-1381-2 $17.99 Library ed. 978-1-5247-1382-9 $20.99 e-book ed. 978-1-5247-1383-6 $10.99 The “miracle” referred to in the title was of course the birth of the five identical Dionne sisters in...
The Language of Fire: Joan of Arc Reimagined by Stephanie Hemphill High School Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins 495 pp. 6/19 978-0-06-249011-7 $17.99 In this engrossing first-person, present-tense verse novel, Hemphill (Your Own, Sylvia, rev. 3/07; Hideous Love, rev. 9/13) reimagines the fifteenth-century life of French martyr Joan of Arc. Readers follow...
Not all deserving books bring home ALA awards. Our annual Mind the Gap Awards pay tribute to our favorite books that didn’t win. Here’s how we reviewed our 2019 winners. A Parade of Elephants by Kevin Henkes; illus. by the author Preschool Greenwillow 40 pp. g 9/18 978-0-06-266827-1 $18.99...
Ink Knows No Borders: Poems of the Immigrant and Refugee Experience edited by Patrice Vecchione and Alyssa Raymond Middle School, High School Triangle Square/Seven Stories 183 pp. 3/19 Paper ed. 978-1-60980-907-2 $15.95 ebook ed. 978-1-60980-908-9 $13.99 Poems as piercing and reflective as the shards of a shattered mirror offer stunning...
Today marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall riots in New York City, an event that laid the groundwork for the first Gay Pride parade and celebrations that have evolved into a month-long recognition of LGBTQ+ identities and communities.During my 1990s childhood in a pervasively conservative, Christian, Southern environment, I...
The Iliadadapted by Gareth Hinds; illus. by the adapterMiddle School, High School Candlewick 264 pp.3/19 978-0-7636-8113-5 $27.99Paper ed. 978-0-7636-9663-4 $16.99As with his treatment of The Odyssey (rev. 11/10), Hinds offers an ambitious and compelling comics adaptation of a Homerian epic. This complex, winding tale picks up in the tenth year...
To Night Owl from Dogfishby Holly Goldberg Sloan and Meg WolitzerIntermediate, Middle School Dial/Dutton 311 pp. g2/19 978-0-5255-5323-6 $17.99At the start of this epistolary (via email) novel, twelve-year-olds Bett Devlin, an adventure-loving California girl of African American and Brazilian descent, and Avery Bloom, a tightly wound New Yorker whose single...
Helloby Fiona Woodcock; illus. by the authorPreschool Greenwillow 40 pp.5/19 978-0-06-264456-6 $17.99In Look (rev. 7/18), Woodcock strung together a series of words with double os, more or less one per page, to tell a story of a brother and sister visiting the zoo. In this companion, double ls get the...
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