…Like me, with your mouth full of leftovers? This migration has caught me and Jonathan in the midst of taking it slow, and traveling, so it may take us a moment to get back up to speed and get comfortable in with our upgrade.  In the meantime… Monica Edinger at Educating Alice hosted a couple [...]

Everyone, we’ve heard from SLJ that for technical issues (which many of you have been experiencing) they are fast-forwarding their server upgrade to: tonight. This means that at 12 midnight EST we will be “freezing” posting so that they can migrate our content…giving us a face lift in the process! (Check out  http://100ScopeNotes.com or http://blogs.slj.com/connect-the-pop for [...]

Upon rereading MOONBIRD, it remains firmly entrenched in my top three.  It doesn’t have the buzz that BOMB does, but I think it’s just as good in its own way.  Take plot, for instance, a criterion that most people would give to BOMB in a head-to-head comparison.  To be sure, the tension and suspense of BOMB [...]

As I understand better the distance created for me in the prose style of BOMB, I also understand better why I find Nelson’s book so engaging, collapsing that distance.  So it’s interesting to note that for many of you who responded in Jonathan’s first post on this title,  your concern was exactly one of distance. [...]

It’s time for our final two nominations.  32 of you played our little game in the last round, and this is what we came up with. (17) LIAR & SPY (16) BOMB (16) SPLENDORS AND GLOOMS (8) NO CRYSTAL STAIR (8) THE ONE AND ONLY IVAN (7) SUMMER OF THE GYPSY MOTHS (7) WONDER (6) [...]

This is what’s so interesting to me about reading for the (Mock!) Newbery: how a book changes on second read.  And when I look back at the comments on Jonathan’s post for Liar & Spy, I see that many of the advocates had delved into it more than once.  My own “not personally compelling” comment? [...]

Documention has evolved–perhaps is still evolving–in nonfiction books for children and young adults, and as such, it is a bit of a moving target.  Jim Murphy said as much on a recent thread. About the sourcing for The Great Fire. That book was done a long time ago (as far as publishing goes) and sourcing [...]

JEPP has come up a few times in comments this season, in most interesting contrast to WONDER SHOW and WILL SPARROW’S ROAD for its depiction of characters with dwarfism.  It is easily the most complex and complete depiction of the three, because here the dwarf is the protagonist, and the book itself is longer (nearly 400 [...]

When Nina introduced this book way back in September, her biggest quibble was with Ivan’s voice, particularly the rich metaphorical language that dominates the first 50 pages or so.  This didn’t bother me because, like many of you, I made a distinction between his thinking voice and his speaking voice.  However, I do still find that first section [...]

Do you have a favorite author that provokes a Pavlovian response?  When I hear “Polly Horvath’s new book” I drool.  ”…two new books..” knocked me to the floor in fits. Up and dusted, I tried to put my brain in order so that I could read her current titles as objectively as possible…meaning, likely, that [...]