"Helping adults find great children's books"
Title: The Death of Yorik Mortwell Author: Stephen Messer (illustrated by Gris Grimly) Genre: Middle-grade Gothic fantasy novel (Dark Fantasy) Age Category: 9 years + Summary: The Death of Yorik Mortwell It’s not every day you come across a book where the hero dies in the first chapter. But in The Death of Yorik Mortwell, [...]
Title: One Moose, Twenty Mice Author: Clare Beaton Genre: Toddler board book (Counting book) Age Category: Infant to 2 years Summary: A Children’s Counting Book Clare Beaton’s One Moose, Twenty Mice is a counting book to help with learning numbers for preschool. It begins with the following statement/question: “One moose, but where’s the cat?” Each [...]
Title: The Door in the Forest Author: Roderick Townley Genre: Middle-grade Fiction (Children’s fantasy novels) Age Category: 8 years + Children’s Fantasy Novel: The Door in the Forest Daniel Crowley cannot tell a lie. For most of his life, this inability has been a fairly manageable annoyance. Now, as soldiers move into the small town [...]
Title: The Last Synapsid Author: Timothy Mason Genre: Middle-grade Fiction Age Category: 9-12 years Are you looking for a middle-grade novel with dinosaurs, time-travel, eco-responsibility, and Shakespeare for children? If so, The Last Synapsid by Timothy Mason may be what you are looking for! Summary: The Last Synapsid Life in Faith, Colorado is fairly uneventful [...]
Title: The Adventures of Tinitin: The Secret of the Unicorn Author: Hergé (Georges Rémi) Genre: Adventure comic book Age category: 8-12 years With the scheduled December 2011 release of Steven Spielberg’s movie, The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, I thought I would review the classic 1959 middle-grade comic with the same title [...]
Title: Seeds of Change Author: Jen Cullerton Johnson, ill. Sonia Lynn Sadler Genre: Picture book Age Category: 6-to-8-years In honor of Earth Day I reviewed Seeds of Change, by Jen Cullerton Johnson. This book is already much decorated, having garnered the Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe Award for New Talent in Illustration, and a place on [...]
Title: The Storm Before Atlanta Author: Karen Schwabach Genre: Middle-Grade Historical Fiction Age Category: 9 – 12 years Children’s Book about the Civil War: The Storm Before Atlanta The Storm Before Atlanta is a children’s book about the Civil War. The book opens in 1863, with the Northern and Southern United States locked in conflict. [...]
Title: Mockingjay Author: Suzanne Collins Genre: Young Adult Fiction (Books for Teens) Age Category: 16 to 19 years + Today I finish my series on Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games Trilogy with a summary and review of the much anticipated, and much hyped book for teens, Mockingjay. In this Mockingjay summary and review I will discuss [...]
Title: ZooBorns: The Newest, Cutest Animals from the World’s Zoos and Aquariums Authors: Andrew Bleiman, Chris Eastland Genre: Non-Fiction Picture Books Age Category: 6 to 9 years Non-Fiction Picture Book Summary ZooBorns is a non-fiction picture book portrait gallery of roughly 100 baby animals born in zoos and aquariums around the world. Each “zooborn” is [...]
Title: Catching Fire Author: Suzanne Collins Genre: Young Adult Fiction (Books for Teens) Age Category: 16 to 19 years + Today, in honor of Teen Read Week, I review the second book in the Hunger Games Trilogy, Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins. As it turns out, teen readers across the country recently chose Catching Fire [...]
Title: The Hunger Games Author: Suzanne Collins Genre: Young Adult Fiction Age Category: 16 to 19 years + Well, I’m late to the “game” on this one. Nevertheless, having just read the first in Suzanne Collins’s young adult fiction trilogy—in the wake of the buzz around the just-released third book of the trilogy, Mockingjay—I feel [...]
Title: The Fantastic Undersea Life of Jacques Cousteau Author: Dan Yaccarino Genre: Picture Books for Children (Nonfiction) Age Category: 6 to 8 years Today, in honor of Nonfiction Monday, I’m reviewing Dan Yaccarino’s The Fantastic Undersea Life of Jacques Cousteau. I must say, this picture book made me nostalgic: I grew up fascinated by Cousteau’s [...]
Title: Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes Author: Mem Fox, (illustrations: Helen Oxenbury) Genre: Baby Board Books Age Category: Infant to 5 years Baby’s toes are one of nature’s wonderful features. When I catch a glimpse of them I can’t help but marvel a bit. The toe pads are almost perfectly circular. And the [...]
Title: Pippo Gets Lost Author: Helen Oxenbury Genre: Best Baby Board Books Age Category: Infant to 2 years In my view, Helen Oxenbury’s old-school baby board books set the gold standard for children’s books in the infant-to-2-years age category. Here I review a board book from her delightful series about Tom and Pippo. For my [...]
Title: Beezus and Ramona Author: Beverly Cleary Genre: Juvenile Fiction / 3rd Grade Chapter Books Age Category: 6 to 12 years With the upcoming release of the movie “Ramona and Beezus” on July 23rd, I thought it would be fun to review Beverly Cleary’s classic chapter book Beezus and Ramona, the first in the series [...]
