In our November/December 2016 issue, reviewer Monica Edinger asked author Anne Nesbet about the narrative structure of her new novel Cloud and Wallfish. Read the full starred review. Monica Edinger: I’m really curious about the Secret Files. Were they part of the design of the book from the start? Anne Nesbet: The Secret Files were […]
Review of Cloud and Wallfish
November 22, 2016 by Leave a Comment
Cloud and Wallfish by Anne Nesbet Intermediate Candlewick 390 pp. 10/16 978-0-7636-8803-5 $16.99 Noah Keller’s life in 1989 small-town Virginia is uneventful — until the day his parents pick him up after school and whisk him off to East Berlin, where, he is told, his PhD candidate mother will be researching children’s speech challenges such […]
Review of In the Shadow of Liberty: The Hidden History of Slavery, Four Presidents, and Five Black Lives
September 7, 2016 by Leave a Comment
In the Shadow of Liberty: The Hidden History of Slavery, Four Presidents, and Five Black Lives by Kenneth C. Davis Middle School Holt 279 pp. 9/16 978-1-62779-311-7 $17.99 Best known for his Don’t Know Much About History titles, Davis here presents another view of the American past, bringing to light the stories of five enslaved […]
Review of Snow White
September 6, 2016 by Leave a Comment
Snow White by Matt Phelan; illus. by the author Intermediate, Middle School Candlewick 216 pp. 9/16 978-0-7636-7233-1 $19.99 Phelan has visited the 1930s Dust Bowl in The Storm in the Barn (rev. 11/09), early-1900s vaudevillian Buster Keaton in Bluffton (rev. 11/13), and late-nineteenth-century explorers in Around the World (rev. 11/11). Here he heads off to […]
Review of Every Single Second
June 7, 2016 by Leave a Comment
Every Single Second by Tricia Springstubb; illus. by Diana Sudyka Middle School Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins 360 pp. 6/16 978-0-06-236628-3 $16.99 g e-book ed. 978-0-06-236630-6 $9.99 Nella Sabatini’s life is largely centered on her tight-knit Italian American family, including her harried mother, her cemetery-groundskeeper father, her four unruly younger brothers, and her crotchety great-grandmother, Nonna. But […]
Review of Makoons
May 7, 2016 by Leave a Comment
Makoons [Birchbark House] by Louise Erdrich; illus. by the author Intermediate Harper/HarperCollins 166 pp. 8/16 978-0-06-057793-3 $16.99 Library ed. 978-0-06-057794-0 $17.89 g e-book ed. 978-0-06-239540-5 $10.99 This fifth title in the Birchbark House series, a direct sequel to Chickadee (rev. 9/12), opens with Makoons, a young Ojibwe boy, telling a vision of his family’s future, […]
Review of Enchanted Air: Two Cultures, Two Wings: A Memoir
August 5, 2015 by Leave a Comment
Enchanted Air: Two Cultures, Two Wings: A Memoir by Margarita Engle Middle School Atheneum 195 pp. 8/15 978-1-4814-3522-2 $17.99 g e-book ed. 978-1-4814-3524-6 $10.99 Well known for her portrayals of historic Cubans in verse novels such as The Surrender Tree (rev. 7/08) and The Poet Slave of Cuba (rev. 7/06), Engle explores her own past […]
Alice: 150 Years of Wonderland
July 21, 2015 by 1 Comment
As may be evident from the name of my blog (educating alice) and recent Horn Book article (“Alice, the Transformer”), I’m a lifelong fan of Lewis Carroll’s Alice books. Naturally, I’m having a blast celebrating this year’s 150th anniversary of the publication of the first book, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, along with other people all […]
Field Notes: Alice, the Transformer
May 7, 2015 by 2 Comments
She began life as Alice Liddell, the daughter of an Oxford college dean, who in 1856, along with her brother and two sisters, was befriended by mathematics tutor Charles Dodgson, later better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll. A few years later, on a summer boat trip, the first transformation occurred when Carroll told […]
Review of One Plastic Bag: Isatou Ceesay and the Recycling Women of the Gambia
February 25, 2015 by 1 Comment
One Plastic Bag: Isatou Ceesay and the Recycling Women of the Gambia by Miranda Paul; illus. by Elizabeth Zunon Primary Millbrook 32 pp. 2/15 Library ed. 978-1-4677-1608-6 $19.99 e-book ed. 978-1-4677-6299-1 $19.99 In the 1980s in the cities of the Gambia, a switch from using baskets made of natural materials to non-biodegradable plastic bags led […]
