Don’t judge a book by its cover, they say. To heck with that, say I. When it comes to books for kids, nine times out of ten you’re going to end up judging a book on its cover no matter how much you try not to. That’s because kids themselves judge books by their covers and if a jacket is dull as dishwater… Read More
Posts Tagged ‘middle grade’
Review of the Day: The Adventures of Nanny Piggins by R.A. Spratt
Friday, December 24th, 2010Review of the Day: The Clockwork Three by Matthew Kirby
Saturday, December 11th, 2010
I’m in a weird position. I’m tired of Steampunk, and yet if I say that word to most kids that walk into my library they’ll give me a blank stare followed by an immediate, “What’s Steampunk?” I’d explain to them that it’s this strange amalgamation of historical fiction plus futuristic gear-based clockwork technology but I know that this would not cause the blank stares to cease. They’d simply grow blanker. I’m… Read More
Review of the Day: Crunch by Leslie Connor
Tuesday, November 30th, 2010
Leslie Connor forgive me; I sometimes forget how awesome you are. It’s nice to rely on an author. To know that you can trust them to write book after book that isn’t crap. That’s true on the adult side of things, but I feel it’s particularly important to remind folks of this on the children’s literary side as well. When a parent or a teacher or a… Read More
Review of the Day: Where the Streets Had a Name by Randa Abdel-Fattah
Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010
When I was a child I had a very vague sense of global conflicts in other countries. Because of my Bloom County comics I knew a bit about apartheid in South Africa. Later as a teen I heard The Cranberries sing “Zombie” and eventually learned a bit about the troubles in Northern Ireland. The Israeli/Palestinian conflict, however… Read More
Review of the Day: The Popularity Papers by Amy Ignatow
Thursday, September 2nd, 2010
There are good and bad results that occur when a book like Diary of a Wimpy Kid hits the stratosphere. On the one hand, suddenly publishers are a lot more open-minded about breathing life into books that… Read More
Review of the Day – Milo: Sticky Notes and Brain Freeze by Alan Silberberg
Friday, July 2nd, 2010
“It’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid if the mom died.” BAM! Now that’s grabby, ain’t it? If I were a Hollywood executive I suppose that might be how I’d sell Alan Silberberg’s newest novel about a boy and his issues. It’s not how I’d sell it to an actual kid, though. Alan Silberberg has managed something that I would have deemed… Read More
