Michael Ruzicka, Office Manager, was raised in suburban Los Angeles, received a BA in Creative Writing/Poetry at UC Santa Cruz, then moved to Birmingham, AL, where he spent five years owning an independent bookstore and earned an MLIS. He has brought his librarian skills to Vanderbilt’s Television News Archive, Battle Ground Academy, The Museum of Contemporary Art-Chicago, and the Chicago School of Professional Psychology. Michael is very excited to be a part of Booklist and call Chicago his home.
A country the size of Connecticut, Lebanon contains over seven million people with different ethnic backgrounds, 18 religious sects, and a growing number of Syrian refugees fleeing armed conflict. Current demographics aside, Lebanon has been grappling with a civil war that has lasted on and off since 1975. Out of Lebanon’s rich society and complex […]
The February 15 issue of Booklist magazine is now live. Visit Booklist Online, where you’ll find 254 new reviews and four new feature articles and lists. The articles will be free to all for the next two weeks—to have unrestricted access, you’ll need to log in. If you aren’t yet a subscriber, or you do subscribe but haven’t […]
The February 1 issue of Booklist magazine is now live. Visit Booklist Online, where you’ll find 304 new reviews and 11 new feature articles and lists. The articles will be free to all for the next two weeks—to have unrestricted access, you’ll need to log in. If you aren’t yet a subscriber, or you do subscribe but haven’t […]
The January 1 & 15 issue of Booklist magazine is now live. Visit Booklist Online, where you’ll find 351 new reviews and 14 new feature articles and lists. The articles will be free to all for the next two weeks—to have unrestricted access, you’ll need to log in. If you aren’t yet a subscriber, or […]
The Chi—a new drama series created by Lena Waithe and produced by Common—just premiered on Showtime. The show, set on the South Side of Chicago, portrays people living in an area fraught with gun violence. Most striking about the show is the range of characters it contains: while they span age groups and economic strata, […]
Booklist’s Spotlight on First Novels has me feeling nostalgic. Long before I ventured into world of librarianship, I was an independent bookseller in the late 1990s. My naiveté allowed me to ignore the imminent threat that Amazon posed (and still poses) to my then-chosen profession. Books had always been in my life, and recommending them […]
The November 1 issue of Booklist magazine is now live. Visit Booklist Online, where you’ll find 303 new reviews and 7 new feature articles and lists. The articles will be free to all for the next two weeks—to have unrestricted access, you’ll need to log in. If you aren’t yet a subscriber, or you do subscribe but haven’t […]
The September 1 issue of Booklist magazine is now live. Visit Booklist Online, where you’ll find 336 new reviews and 8 new feature articles and lists. The articles will be free to all for the next two weeks—to have unrestricted access, you’ll need to log in. If you aren’t yet a subscriber, or you do subscribe but haven’t […]
Every weekday, we feature a different review on Booklist Online that highlights starred reviews, high-demand titles, and / or titles especially relevant to our current issue’s spotlight. We’ve collected the reviews from July 31 through August 4 so that you can revisit the week’s best books. July 31 Five-Carat Soul, by James McBride McBride’s (Kill ’em and Leave, 2016) […]
The August issue of Booklist magazine is now live. Visit Booklist Online, where you’ll find 367 new reviews and 9 new feature articles and lists. The articles will be free to all for the next two weeks—to have unrestricted access, you’ll need to log in. If you aren’t yet a subscriber, or do subscribe but haven’t registered for […]
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