Publication Location: Boston

Jane Goodall : the Woman Who Redefined Man

Library Journal: Jane Goodall's discovery in 1960 that chimpanzees in the wild use crude tools meant that ability could no longer be considered a unique and defining characteristic of human beings. Today, as a writer and speaker, she is something akin to a cult icon. As her colleague and former collaborator (Visions of Caliban: On […]

When the Wall Came Down : the Berlin Wall and the Fall of Soviet Communism

This is history as only an eyewitness can tell it. In 1989, veteran journalist Serge Schmemann was in his hotel room when his assistant from East Germany burst in with some incredible news: the Berlin Wall was open. Serge jumped into the first cab he could find and raced to the wall in time to […]

Calabash Cat, and His Amazing Journey

School Library Journal Review: PreS-Gr 3-Similar in mood and style to Rumford's Traveling Man (Houghton, 2001), this creative offering is geared to a younger audience. Calabash Cat sets out to discover where the world ends. Each time he thinks that he has found his destination, another animal happens along and takes him farther. Riding a […]

The Witch's Walking Stick

Publisher Weekly Review: Starred Review. In this comic fairy tale, a Cinderella-esque orphan flees her mean older siblings and happens upon a witch's magic walking stick. The witch typically uses the stick for "turning birds into bats or squirrels into goldfish," and the other creatures' anxious frowns arouse distinct anti-crone sympathies. Fortunately for the local […]

Surprising Sharks

School Library Journal Review: Gr 1-3-The major premise of this book is that sharks vary greatly in size and shape. The front and back endpapers capture the dwarf lantern shark at just 6 inches in length, the whale shark measuring more than 39 feet, and many other species between these extremes. Although in some cases […]

Gossamer

Publisher Weekly Review: Starred Review. Lowry's (The Giver) spellbinding story centers on a clever, curious young dream-giver. Littlest One is learning the nocturnal task performed by her kind, which entails gently touching objects belonging to a human, thereby gathering "memories, colors, words once spoken, hints of scents and the tiniest fragments of forgotten sound" and […]

100 Best Books For Children

School Library Journal Review: What makes a book a classic? Silvey, a longtime children's book specialist and literature lover, addresses that question in order to identify books that represent a "basic literary heritage." The result is a highly select list of 100 titles published from 1902 to 2002. These are titles that have been or […]