Kathi Appelt is a first time novelist, but you wouldn’t know it. Her Newbery honor winner The Underneath reminds me of someone telling a folk […]
Things Not Seen
What would you do if you woke up one morning and discovered that you had become invisible? This is what happens to 15-year old Bobby […]
The Higher Power of Lucky
In The Higher Power of Lucky, Susan Patron has created an indomitable character in ten year old Lucky Trimble. Lucky lives in Hard Pan, CA […]
Read This Book, Then Run To the Food Store
This post would have been finished much earlier if I hadn’t been busy copying the scrumptious recipes that Molly Wizenberg, author of A Homemade Life: Stories […]
Gooney Bird Is So Absurd
Lois Lowry’s Gooney Bird Greene is back in Gooney Bird Is So Absurd. It’s now January in Mrs. Pidgeon’s second grade class. The students are […]
Dave Eggers’s “What is the What”
War and famine and slavery as they come to us in newspaper headlines are troubling events that we puzzle over or analyze or ignore, and […]
Cedric Jennings 10 years later
If you think that you’ve had to overcome a lot in your life, read one of my favorite books from the 90s, A Hope in […]
Where in the World is John Stark Bellamy II ?
If you are a fan of true crime books and/or books about the Cleveland area, you’ve probably read books by John Stark Bellamy II. John […]
“The Elegance of the Hedgehog”: a rare and subtle treat from Muriel Barbery
How do you imagine Paris? I think of the city of lovers, sophisticated women dressed with style, bridges over the Seine, the Louvre, artists sipping […]