Wonderstruck. I know, I know – that's the title of Brian Selznick’s previous jaw-dropping accomplishment on the page ...
We're right in the middle of National Hispanic Heritage Month – now through October 15. Do you know where your books are? If you're looking for a delightful, heart-tugging, bilingual even (!) picture book, this is it! Monica Brown, creator of the rollicking Marisol McDonald series, introduces...
Who can resist a lost little kitten? Furry-friendlies unite: this adorable black-grey-and-white fluff-bundle will set your heart all aflutter. Wandering out with Mommy Cat and two siblings, this little one gets lost. She's woofed at by a dog (thankfully leashed), and narrowly misses getting run over...
A young girl and her father are traveling, with little more than a backpack each. She counts what she sees to pass the time: cows, hens, a bored donkey, the clouds ...
"Listen. I'm going to tell you a story -- " Well, of course, if two-time National Book Award finalist (third time will be the charm!) Gene Luen Yang is involved with the explicating, you're going to listen, and listen well. This former high school computer science...
This week, the National Book Foundation is releasing the longlists category by category, day by day, for the coveted National Book Award (winners will be announced November 18). Included among the 10 titles cited for "Young People's Literature" is Laura Ruby’s Bone Gap. [I confess I have fingers,...
So you know how the book ends by the second paragraph in the "Prologue." But holy moly, once you start, you'll want to experience every detail of how the eponymous boys in the boat – "nine young men from the state of Washington – farm boys, fisherman, and...
Caldecott Medalist author/illustrator Allen Say introduced his personal portrait-of-an-artist-as-a-young-man in the one title he didn't illustrate, the autobiographical middle-grade novel, The Ink-Keeper's Apprentice, originally published in 1979. More than three decades later, in 2011, Say returned to his early artistic journey, reworking his Apprentice into a...
Here in my temporary exile in the Beehive State, I remain fascinated by the religion that dominates my current location. In a moment of ironic timing, as I was wandering the many surrounding mountains with narrator Kirsten Potter stuck in the ears, this passage stuck: "Whenever friends from other...
Somewhere in an old forest, a little tree grows. But the forest is shrinking, the rains shower less often, and the little tree knows that her precious seed cannot flourish there. With the help of a brown bird who has flown far into the blue skies, she sends...
Summer is waning way too quickly, but you still have a final week left to indulge in frothy reads: the over-the-top excesses of Singaporean Manhattanite Kevin Kwan’s novels might be just what you've been looking for as Labor Day looms. If you haven't yet relished Kwan's debut,...
The year is 1913. Zeynep and Ali are teenage lovers in Anatolia (once Asia Minor, now modern Turkey) who part with a lingering sense of bitterness: Ali's impending departure breaks their promise of escaping their village together. Feeling betrayed, Zeynep turns away: "I refuse to be your...
Allow me to dispel any notions that the dragons within are why I'm insisting this is one of my Absolute Favorites ever. Plenty of other reasons make Nimona an irresistible delight: allow me to count at least the top-10 ways ...
Salmon meunière, acqua pazza, mizuna and onion salad, yellowtail teriyaki ...
Freshly back from the Jersey Shore, debut novelist P.S. Duffy talks about writing her first book at age 10 although she didn’t publish her first novel until she was 65, her inability to ever return to her birth country of China, and how a stranger’s...
“Define moral certainty”: The Great War in P.S. Duffy’s The Cartographer of No Man’s Land “Moral certainty.” “Righteous anger.” “God’s retribution.” The Great War implodes humanity in “No Man’s Land – a cratered landscape of ruin” in P.S. Duffy’s first novel. Published in October 2013 when Duffy was 65, The...
