Keir Graff is Executive Editor of Booklist Publications and the author of six books. His most recent is the middle-grade novel, The Phantom Tower (2018). Follow him on Twitter at @Booklist_Keir.
Two things about the books on this list. One, the titles are great. From Planet of the Umps to You’ve Got to Have Balls to Make It in This League (and no fewer than two books titled Let’s Get It On), you’d almost think the authors’ careers had included countless hours of downtime in locker rooms thinking about […]
Follow the action at 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia and improve your understanding of the other kind of football. The group-stage games are coming fast and furious at the 2018 World Cup in Russia, and like most sports fans, you’re thinking only one thing: Yes, but what should I read? Fear not, for I have […]
On Thursday, Russia and Saudi Arabia will kick off in game one of the 2018 World Cup in Russia, and like most sports fans, you’re thinking only one thing: Yes, but what should I read? Fear not, for I have selected 32 titles, one for each team in the finals—and all but one published since […]
Good things come in threes—the number used to define a bona fide trend (even if it’s years in the making). With the publication today of Adrienne Kisner’s Dear Rachel Maddow, it’s time to inform you that our dear authors are using epistolary titles with celebrity recipients: Publishers Marketplace also recently announced the acquisition of We Love Anderson […]
What a Character! In a recent post, I touched briefly on Hemingway’s influence on crime fiction and shared three books whose plots are derived from a real-life unsolved Hemingway mystery. But Hemingway, whose life story often reads like fiction, has served another purpose for mystery novelists seeking inspiration: Many of them have decided to use […]
The Curious Case of the Hemingway MacGuffin Ernest Hemingway may not have written mystery fiction, but you can blame him for a lot of it. It’s possible that, after Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, no other author has had as much influence on the way would-be tough guys punctuate their crime fiction. (You know. What […]
Sometimes I want to immerse myself in a 400-page thriller; others I pine for a pocket-sized paperback that can be devoured in a single sitting. And while nearly all crime fiction once fit that description—from Georges Simenon and James M. Cain to Mickey Spillane and Jean-Patrick Manchette—these days, short crime novels are the fugitive kind. […]
Book-jacket designers are strange birds, indeed. Idiosyncratic visionaries who often intuit the perfect visual cue to entice us to pick up a book and read it, sometimes, like those giant flocks of starlings who wheel in the sky without using turn signals, they bunch together and do the same thing for no apparent reason at […]
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the great Australian crime fiction writer Peter Temple, even planning to revisit his books for a piece in the 2018 edition of Booklist‘s Mystery Month this May—so it came as a shock to learn last night that he’d died of cancer at age 71. As a fan, that’s hard […]
As the President of the United States dignifies the discussion of immigration by referring to Haiti, El Salvador, and various African nations as “shithole countries,” immigration is very much on my mind—for a much different reason. A recent story in the Chicago Tribune highlighted the triumph of the Sullivan High School soccer team, a group […]
Encouraging Middle-Schoolers to Choose Books
There’s been a lot of discussion among the librarians I know about what to do with middle-schoolers: they just don’t seem to read as much as they used to. I know that here in Chicago, we have a unique perspective on this situation, since our schools run K–8. In my former school system in Maryland […]
Getting Started with the Global Read Aloud
The 2017 Global Read Aloud kicked off yesterday, and I’m here to help. Author and educator Pernille Ripp founded the program as a way to connect students and teachers from different locales around the topics of books. (Think One Book One School or One Book One City, but on a global scale.) Each year, Ripp […]
TWO TRUTHS AND A LIE: Practice Recognizing Fake News
Cindy: There have been a number of YA fiction books with the title “Two Truths and a Lie,” but we’ve found a creative, informational book for middle-grade students that reinforces evaluating information for truth. Fake news, anyone? Two Truths and a Lie: It’s Alive (2017) by Ammi-Joan Paquette and Laurie Ann Thompson is the first […]
Encouraging Middle-Schoolers to Choose Books
There’s been a lot of discussion among the librarians I know about what to do with middle-schoolers: they just don’t seem to read as much as they used to. I know that here in Chicago, we have a unique perspective on this situation, since our schools run K–8. In my former school system in Maryland […]
Getting Started with the Global Read Aloud
The 2017 Global Read Aloud kicked off yesterday, and I’m here to help. Author and educator Pernille Ripp founded the program as a way to connect students and teachers from different locales around the topics of books. (Think One Book One School or One Book One City, but on a global scale.) Each year, Ripp […]
TWO TRUTHS AND A LIE: Practice Recognizing Fake News
Cindy: There have been a number of YA fiction books with the title “Two Truths and a Lie,” but we’ve found a creative, informational book for middle-grade students that reinforces evaluating information for truth. Fake news, anyone? Two Truths and a Lie: It’s Alive (2017) by Ammi-Joan Paquette and Laurie Ann Thompson is the first […]
Follow the Booklist Reader