Freaky Fast Frankie Joe By Lutricia Clifton Holiday House $16.95 ISBN: 978-0-8234-2367-5 Ages 9-12 On shelves now Realistic fiction for kids has more baggage than other fictional genres for that age group. Fantasies and comedies and science fiction get to rely on the extraordinary to weave their tales. Historical fiction, meanwhile, has the nice veil [...]
Twelve Kinds of Ice By Ellen Bryan Obed Illustrated by Barbara McClintock Houghton Mifflin Harcourt $16.99 ISBN: 978-0-618-89129-0 Ages 6-10 On shelves November 6th Every year the children’s librarians of the New York Public Library system come together and create a list of 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing. The list, now entering its 101st [...]
Wonder By R.J. Palacio Alfred A. Knopf $15.99 ISBN: 978-0-375-86902-0 Ages 9-12 On shelves now They say if you want to win an Oscar you need to play somebody with an extreme personal difficulty (terminal illness, disease, etc.). They do not, for the record, say that about award winning children’s books. There isn’t this general [...]
Wonderstruck By Brian Selznick Scholastic Press $29.99 ISBN: 978-0545027892 Ages 9 and up On shelves September 13, 2011 Hype. What’s the point? A publisher believes that a book is going to be big so they crank up the old hype machine and do everything in their power to draw attention to it long before its [...]
The Strange Case of Origami Yoda By Tom Angleberger Amulet Books (an imprint of Abrams) $16.95 ISBN: 978-0-8109-8425-7 Ages 9-12 On shelves now. Let us now sit back and consider what the ultimate boy/girl middle grade novel would contain. By which I mean, the novel that perfectly balances out the stereotypical vision of what boys [...]
Every Soul a Star By Wendy Mass Little, Brown and Company $16.99 ISBN: 978-0-316-03313-8 Ages 8-14 On shelves now Natural phenomena lend themselves to children’s literature. Picture books, for example, are filled with fireflies, rainbows, and shooting stars. Then the child readers get a little older and the phenomena get more complex. The death of [...]
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian By Sherman Alexie Art by Ellen Forney Little Brown & Company $16.99 ISBN: 978-0-316-01368-0 Ages 15 and up On shelves now I asked you what my final 2007 review should be. You voted. And that winner turned out to be this book. It probably doesn’t need the [...]
No Talking By Andrew Clements. Simon and Schuster. $15.99. For ages 9-12. Not all Andrew Clements novels are created equal, and that’s a fact. I mean, don’t get me wrong. This is true of most children’s authors. But sometimes I feel that with Clements, he’s always readable. Even if you feel that one book of [...]
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