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: 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 Grieving her mother, 12-year-old Ollie has withdrawn from friends, activities, and even her […]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: What does it take to end oppression and injustice? Many of us would suggest the inspiration of an exceptional leader, but I believe in the bravery and determination of ordinary people. Alice Fay Duncan’s moving picture book, Memphis, Martin, and the Mountaintop: The Sanitation Strike of 1968 (2018), is a prime example. Duncan bases her book […]
Lynn: Kids love dinosaurs and they love books about dinosaurs. So all I really have to say is that we have a fun and very different book for your dinosaur-loving readers This inventive adventure story is set in an alternate America. It is 1863, and in this world, while the Civil War rages, dinosaurs not […]
Lynn: The Boggart is back—and Nessie, too! That news brought a lot of happiness to our 8-year-old focus group member who, with his dad, had recently inhaled the previous two books. I was pretty geeked myself to see Susan Cooper gift readers with The Boggart Fights Back (2018). It’s taken me a while to get this […]
Lynn: It’s a great season for baseball fans! Not only is our favorite game in full swing, but there’s a full field of new books about baseball to enjoy when the games are over. Bookends reviewed two last week. Here are two more recent titles to join the lineup. The Game Can’t Love You Back, by […]
Lynn: Girls don’t play baseball. It’s impossible to know how often girls yearning to play the national sport have heard that phrase. Well, girls do play baseball, and they have played as far back as the 1890s. Here are two wonderful new books, set in the 1950s, that take on this very subject. In the middle-grade […]
Lynn: Are you still watching videos of Meghan and Harry’s wedding on YouTube? Yup, me too. If you and your teens are ready to move on to royal-watching in a different format, here’s a delightful new book that checks all the boxes for fans of crowned-heads-on-anything. Gorgeous clothes? Check. Handsome princes? Check. Behind-the-scenes secrets? Check. […]
Lynn: There’s nothing more fun for kids (and many adults) than grubbing in the dirt. Any gardener or small child knows that there are a lot of fascinating things to be found there—many of them wonderfully wiggly. But I had no idea of either the huge variety of critters to be found there or their […]
Lynn: Charlie Tickler’s awful parents dump him wherever and whenever they can to go off and save an animal. This time around, it’s the Golden Mole, and Charlie is stuck with his TV-obsessed grandparents in the village of Castle-on-the-Hudson, the home of a famous school for the deaf. “Why have a nanny when there are grandparents […]
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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