"Helping adults find great children's books"
Title: The Aviary Author: Kathleen O’Dell Genre: Historical Fiction (some Gothic/Fantasy elements) Age Category: 8+ Historical Fiction: The Aviary Clara Dooley leads a quiet, lonely life. A serious heart condition has kept her indoors for years, far away from other children who might excite her. Instead, she spends her days in the Glendoveer Mansion, where her [...]
Title: The Cardturner Author: Louis Sachar Genre: Young Adult Fiction Age Category: 14+ Louis Sachar: The Cardturner High school junior Alton Richards is gearing up for a bummer summer. Dumped by his girlfriend (for his best friend, no less), with no money and no job on the horizon, he is bullied by his parents into [...]
Title: Legacy Author: Thomas E. Sniegoski Genre: Middle-grade fiction (Books for Boys) Age Category: 12 years + Books for Boys: Legacy Eighteen-year old Lucas Moore hasn’t had the best life. He and his mother live in a beat-up trailer in the aptly-named nowhere town of Perdition, Arizona, where she waits tables in a diner and [...]
Title: Warped Author: Maurissa Guibord Genre: Fantasy/Romance Books for Teenage Girls Age Category: 13+ Perfect Book for Teenage Girls: Warped It was just a bit of tapestry. A very old tapestry, tucked into a crate of old books that Tessa’s dad bought at an auction. But Tessa is fascinated. The image—a wild, beautiful unicorn—is so [...]
Title: Rotters Author: Daniel Kraus Genre: Horror Books for Young Adults Age Category: 16+ Horror Books: Rotters Sixteen-year-old Joey Crouch used to be fairly happy. He and his mother enjoyed life in Chicago. He had a best friend. He played the trumpet. He wasn’t popular, but he wasn’t so unpopular as to be a target [...]
Title: The Death of Yorik Mortwell Author: Stephen Messer (illustrated by Gris Grimly) Genre: Middle-grade Fantasy Books Age Category: 9 years + Fantasy Book: 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, that’s exactly [...]
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 [...]
