If you haven't heard of Randy Pausch and experienced his delightful, heartbreaking, inspiring Last Lecture, surely you must: Click here for a comprehensive summary page created by Carnegie Mellon University where he was a professor before he passed away on July 25, 2008 of pancreatic...
The remarkable story begun in The New Sun continues in this second volume of Taro Yashima's graphic memoir, a strikingly simple combination of pictures and brief text that capture a man's journey away from his homeland. Long out of print since its 1947 first printing, Horizon...
Oh, how sad to think this is the very last book by Kamila Shamsie I had left to read ...
No, I have not seen the film version of this title. The book is brutal enough on flat pages. I think moving pictures just might send me over the edge. That said, this riveting, nightmarish title should be required reading for anyone contemplating going to...
In just over a hundred pages of sparse, haunting verse, LeZotte illuminates a part of the Holocaust tragedy that takes up little shelf space in libraries today: the organized mass murder of mentally ill and physically challenged people, as well as the massacre of European...
Is is already time to start thinking about the new year? Come 2010, we'll all be celebrating the year of my son ...
What an amazing, unique, and LUCKY find! First published in 1943 by one of the oldest U.S. publishers, Henry Holt and Company, and in spite of excellent reviews plus a multi-year marketing campaign by both publisher and an early publicist who worked to get the...
Even though the back of the galley says Compestine's latest title is for "Ages 12 and up," I'd definitely recommend saving it for much older readers. These are some of the most realistically gruesome tales outside of Halloween, not to mention dealing with more adult...
Another warning: The body count is staggering by series' end. While most are bad guys, or anonymous innocent bystanders (who are disturbing enough to see splattered across so many pages), the ONE that breaks your heart ...
Just in case you need a refresher, every volume from 11 until the final 18 now opens with a summary and who's who ...
Kamila Shamsie's debut novel is now the same age as her first protagonist, 11-year-old Hasan, the only child of a lauded artist and a once powerful lawyer. The trio live surrounded by extended family and friends in 'the city by the sea' of Karachi, Pakistan....
Marco Polo sure got around in his time, way back in the 13th century! And what a great way to show our instant-access, Web-addicted kids just how incredible the Polo family's adventures were – for any generation! The latest in Chronicle Books' (that great indie San...
It's been almost two years since I first discovered this series (vols. 1-4) and they certainly haven't lost any of their chilling zing! I don't remember that they came with a "Parental Advisory | Explicit Content" warning sticker before, but they certainly do now, so...
Even before this book hit U.S. shelves, French-born Turkish author Elif Shafak was charged with insulting "Turkishness" in violation of Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code because one of her characters refers to the large-scale massacre of Armenians that began in 1915 in Turkey as...
Full disclosure: I pre-ordered all the scheduled next volumes for this series, too. Anything that has "Urasawa" on the cover, I'll be greedily reading ...
I have volumes 3 and 4 of Ikigami already pre-ordered (although not coming soon enough, I might add) so that ought to tell you I'm clearly hooked on this series. I also wish they were longer, too, but that's a groupie talking ...
Prominently noted on the cover as "The first Arab novel to confront the Holocaust" and banned in the author's native Algeria, The German Mujahid is also based on a true story, making it an even more disturbing, striking read. To add to its authenticity, the novel...
Just like addictive junk food (not that I would know, ahem!), you can't read just one volume of Monster. You start one, you have to immediately finish all the ones you can get your hands on. Too bad I ordered only five at a time...
"Did you know that thirty percent of children in American schools are either bullied, or bully other kids?" asks award-winning Australian author Susanne Gervay in her "Author's Note" for the first U.S. edition of her already bestselling novel. Inspired by her own son Jack's experiences...
First an interruption: I learned a very entertaining meaning for a certain common(-ish) word on the first page of Shamsie's second novel: 'bugaboo.' "It's a word that demands to be said out loud," writes Shamsie, "particularly among bilingual Pakistanis who recognize its resemblance to 'baghal...
