Cindy: What a surprise awaits inside these pages! The warning in the title, Do Not Lick This Book (2018), should be heeded—it is, indeed, full of germs! But don’t let that steer you away from reading it. Journey along with Min, a microbe who travels, via your finger, from the paper of the book’s pages […]
Lynn: Looking for a great spooky book to hand teens as Halloween approaches? Cherie Priest’s The Agony House (2018) is a perfect choice! High-school senior Denise, her mom, and new stepdad are the newest residents of Argonne House in New Orleans. Over 100 years old and standing alone on a hurricane-ravaged block, the house is literally falling down […]
Lynn: Here at Bookends, we do our best to review books in the old-fashioned sense, by using literary standards and keeping personal responses out of the mix as much as possible. For this review of Apollo 8: the Mission that Changed Everything (2018) by Martin W. Sandler, I want to say strongly that our literary […]
Cindy: Monopoly has an interesting history and Tanya Lee Stone has produced a thought-provoking picture book about it: Pass Go and Collect $200: The Real Story of How Monopoly Was Invented (2018). Originally called The Landlord’s Game, it was created by Lizzie Magie, who was looking for a way to demonstrate the unfair relationship between landlords and tenants […]
Lynn: It happens without warning: Annabelle has been trying to hold it together for a long time but suddenly she snaps and, in one panicky moment, she is running. “Snapping is easy when you’re already brittle from the worst possible thing happening,” she says. This is the reader’s introduction to Annabelle Agnelli and her journey […]
Lynn: Make no mistake, I love writing Bookends. I love getting to read the fabulous new books that we get sent by generous publishers. Cindy and I are lucky people. But for all of you out there who think that you, too, would like to be book reviewers, I feel honor bound to point out […]
Lynn: The seasons are a perennial topic in primary and preschool classrooms. Especially for children who live in places where the seasons change dramatically, it is a fascinating one. Author and illustrator Sam Usher began his picture-book appreciation of the seasons with Rain (2017), and each subsequent tile has been a joyful appreciation of seasonal fun […]
Lynn: Do you love a scary book? Well, Bookends readers, have we got a treat for you! Katherine Arden’s new middle-grade book, Small Spaces (2018), is the most deliciously scary book you could hope for. This is a just-one-more-chapter-gulp-it-down-in-one-sitting book, and it’s the real, eerie deal. Grieving her mother, 12-year-old Ollie has withdrawn from friends, activities, and even her […]
Lynn: When I heard that a movie of Philip Reeve’s brilliant Mortal Engines (2003) was in the works, I immediately wanted to reread the series. (I hear a chorus of “Sing it, sister!”) If you HAVEN’T read the series, RUN to get the first book NOW! If you’re a fan of world-building, this series is like […]
Cindy: Lynn found The Rough Patch (2018) by Brian Lies at our local public library and was hesitant to give it to me even though she liked it a lot. The story concerns a fox and his pet dog who did everything together: ate ice cream, listened to music, and went on adventures in the truck. […]
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 […]
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