Nick wasn’t a bad kid. He just got these ideas. Bright ideas. Fun ideas. Ideas that sometimes got out of hand. So when Nick decided to call a pen a frindle, he should have known that all of Westfield wouldn’t be able to contain the after effects. Frindle, by Andrew Clements, is a delightful, quick […]
Sounder, by William Armstrong, Book Review
Has anyone out there not yet read this incredible book? Written by William H. Armstrong in 1969, it won the Newberry Medal, the most distinguished award for children’s literature, and not by any stroke of luck. Sounder is a masterful coming of age story, but it’s also far, far more. Set in the deep South in […]
True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, by AVI, Book Review
In any list of children’s writers, AVI should undoubtedly rank near the top. He has an amazing talent for weaving together intricate plots and creating such page-turning intrigue that I can hardly bear to put his work down. He also writes with a clean simplicity that I greatly admire. His prose is beautifully precise, and […]
Jahanara, Princess of Princesses, India 1627, by Kathryn Lasky, Book Review
The main character of this book, Jahanara, was a factual person, the favorite daughter of Emperor Shah Jahan (who built the Taj Mahal). This is a fictionalized account of her life presented in journal entry format, to the utter detriment of the story. While author Kathryn Lasky has scores of books to her credit, the […]