Children’s book reviews – Picture Books, Middle Grade, Young Adult – Publishers Weekly
The Next Dead Thing by Donna Freitas - 11/17/2008
Ever since Stephenie Meyer's vampire romances became a smash success among teen readers, particularly girls, all things dead have been given a new life—at least in the minds of children's editors hoping to take advantage of the trend. But that's not to say that every project with a supernatural cast is being green-lighted.
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Children's Book Reviews 11/17/2008
Picture Books How to Build an A Sara Midda . Workman/Artisan , $17.95 ISBN 978-1-57965-378-1 Offering a hands-on approach to learning the alphabet, this small-format book comes with 11 off-white foam shapes (as well as a mesh storage bag). In the book, miniature, stylized people (and the occasional dog) work together to construct each letter of the alphabet, using rectangular blocks and arcs...
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Can J.K. Rowling Save Christmas? by Judith Rosen - 11/10/2008
With publishers and booksellers nervous about Christmas sales, a little $12.95 book might be the season's savior. The Tales of Beedle the Bard, a Harry Potter offshoot by J.K. Rowling, is being published by Scholastic on Dec. 4. This will be the first Rowling book to be published at the height of the holiday season; all her previous Harry Potters were published in the summer—and the timin...
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Children's Book Reviews 11/10/2008
Picture Books Hush Little Polar Bear Jeff Mack . Roaring Brook , $16.95 (40p) ISBN 978-1-59643-368-7 In his first solo outing, Mack (illustrator of the Bunnicula series) sends an eager-looking polar bear on a series of dreamtime adventures: “Swim through a waterfall./ Splash in a stream./ Paddle past rainbows/ that glisten and gleam.
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Children's Book Reviews 11/03/2008
Picture Books Do You Love Me? Joost Elffers and Curious Pictures . HarperCollins/Bowen , $14.99 (32p) ISBN 978-0-06-166799-2 Elffers (Food Play) teams up with Curious Pictures, producer of such TV shows as Little Einsteins, to introduce Snuzzles. Amorphous and solid-colored, the Snuzzles look a lot like rubber squeak toys, with their heads defined only by protrusions for noses and ears and ...
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Lemony Snicket Redux by Sue Corbett - 10/27/2008
The Baudelaire orphans' sad story may be over but, like a post-apocalyptic cockroach, Lemony Snicket persists—to the great delight of booksellers, children, HarperCollins and Daniel Handler himself. “I miss them,” Handler admits of Violet, Klaus and Sunny, whose adventures concluded in 2006 with The End—60 million copies from his Unfortunate Events series have sold world...
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Children's Book Reviews 10/27/2008
Picture Books I Got Two Dogs John Lithgow , illus. by Robert Neubecker. Simon & Schuster , $17.99 (32p with CD) ISBN 978-1-4169-5881-9 Lithgow’s (I’m a Manatee) singing tribute to a couple of canine ne’er-do-wells named Fanny and Blue strives for the kind of goofy, bouncy simplicity of Burl Ives’s classic Little White Duck album.
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Notes From the Bookroom Elizabeth Devereaux, , September 25, 2007 Jenna's Story
I’d like to thank HarperCollins for making me a tool of the Bush administrati... More
