MORE '2011-REVIEWS' POSTS
Dead End in Norvelt By Jack Gantos Farrar, Straus and Giroux (an imprint of Macmillan) $15.99 ISBN: 978-0-374-37993-3 Ages 10-14 On shelves September 13, 2011 What makes Jack Gantos tick? It’s a question that haunts every book he writes, from the simplest Rotten Ralph to his own YA autobiography Hole in My Life. It’s a […]
My Side of the Car By Kate Feiffer Illustrated by Jules Feiffer Candlewick Press $16.99 ISBN: 978-0-7636-4405-5 Ages 4-8 On shelves April 26th. Reality is subjective. You learn this when you have children of your own. What may be glaringly obvious to a parent will pass right over a six-year-old’s head (and vice-versa). To a […]
Sidekicks By Dan Santat Arthur A. Levine (an imprint of Scholastic) $24.99 ISBN: 978-0-439-29811-7 Ages 8-12 On shelves July 1, 2011 When I was a kid I got to read comics that I had no business putting my grubby little hands on. You see my grandmother had carefully left all my dad’s old Superman, Superboy, […]
Kat, Incorrigible By Stephanie Burgis Atheneum (an imprint of Simon & Schuster) $16.99 ISBN: 9781416994473 Ages 9-12 On shelves now Early nineteenth-century child and teen novels written with an equal influence of Jane Austen and Diana Wynne Jones are nothing new. Indeed they’ve been around for quite some time. They’re your Sorcery and Cecelia by […]
Blue Chicken By Deborah Freedman Viking (an imprint of Penguin) $15.99 ISBN: 978-0-670-01293-0 Ages 4-8 On shelves September 15th Call it barnyard self-actualization. Too heavy an idea for a picture book? Fine. How about breaking down the barn’s fourth wall? Or nine barnyard characters in search of an illustrator? However you want to couch it, […]
Vincent van Gogh and the Colors of the Wind By Chiara Lossani Illustrated by Octavia Monaco Eerdmans Books for Young Readers $18.99 ISBN: 978-0-8028-5390-5 Ages 7-10 On shelves now The art of the children’s biography is not for the faint of heart. If you think it consists of merely shuffling a few facts on a […]
Fly Trap By Frances Hardinge Harper Collins $16.99 ISBN: 978-0-06-088044-6 Ages 9-12 On shelves May 31, 2011 As I see it, reviewing a sequel is a peculiar enterprise. One can hardly review a book without suggesting to the reader that they read the previous novel as well. And in the rare case where the sequel […]
Ice By Arthur Geisert Enchanted Lion Books $14.95 ISBN: 978-1-59270-098-1 For ages 5 and up On shelves now Me and Arthur Geisert, Arthur Geisert and I . . . I wouldn’t say we’ve ever connected, exactly. Over the years I’ve had a hard time getting a grasp on his particular brand of picture book creation. […]
The Many Faces of George Washington: Remaking a Presidential Icon By Carla Killough McClafferty Carolrhoda Books (a division of Lerner) $20.95 ISBN: 978-0-7613-5608-0 Ages 10 and up On shelves April 1st Forensic anthropology meets the guy on the one dollar bill. That’s one way of putting it anyway. Walk into many a classroom and tell […]
The Penderwicks at Point Mouette By Jeanne Birdsall Knopf (an imprint of Random House) $16.99 ISBN: 978-0-375-85851-2 Ages 7-12 On shelves May 10th When Jeanne Birdsall’s first middle grade novel The Penderwicks was published in 2005 it committed a crime. A crime shared, I might add, by books written by authors like Dr. Seuss, J.K. […]