A Long Way Gone
The New Yorker: In 1993, when the author was twelve, rebel forces attacked his home town, in Sierra Leone, and he was separated from his parents. For months, he straggled through the war-torn countryside, starving and terrified, until he was taken under the wing of a Shakespeare-spouting lieutenant in the government army. Soon, he was […]
Whitethorn Woods
Publisher Weekly Review: A proposed highway near the Irish town of Rossmore will mean the destruction of St. Ann's Well, a shrine in Whitethorn Woods thought to deliver healing, husbands and other miracles. The shrine resides in the parish of Fr. Brian Flynn, curate of St. Augustine's. As a fracas erupts between shrine skeptics who […]
E.E. Cummings
Kirkus Reviews A cogent biography weaves life and poetry together for an appreciative look at the unconventional and exacting artist. Reef takes readers from the happy childhood that nurtured his flair for theatrics, as well as his ear for language and rhythm, through his career at Harvard, where he encountered the avant-garde, to his rather […]
Nineteen Minutes
Publisher Weekly Review: Starred Review. Bestseller Picoult (My Sister's Keeper) takes on another contemporary hot-button issue in her brilliantly told new thriller, about a high school shooting. Peter Houghton, an alienated teen who has been bullied for years by the popular crowd, brings weapons to his high school in Sterling, N.H., one day and opens […]
Who Lives In an Alligator Hole?
Kirkus Reviews Rockwell's latest Let's Read and Find Out introduces readers to alligators and the role they play in their habitat. While she also addresses the positive and negative ways people have had an impact on the alligator population over the years, her focus is on alligator holes-places where alligators have thrashed through the damp […]
Snow Is My Favorite and My Best
School Library Journal Review: PreS-Gr 2?Charlie and Lola return in another engaging story that perfectly captures a child's anticipation of the first snow of winter. Big brother Charlie takes his sister out to frolic in a world that has all gone extremely white! Lola and their friends make snow angels, go sledding, and build a […]
Knots
Publishers Weekly : Somalia-born Farah's ninth novel (after Links, first in a trilogy of which this is the second book) tells the spellbinding story of Cambara, a Somalian ?migr? to Canada. Cambara is mourning her only son's drowning death?in the Toronto pool of her abusive lawyer husband's mistress. In the aftermath, Cambara resolves to leave […]
Clementine
Publishers Weekly: I have had not so good of a week," begins the irrepressible narrator of this winning caper. Pennypacker (Stuart's Cape) then takes readers straight through that week, making clear that Clementine has an unfailing nose for trouble and a comical way with words. The eight-year-old proclaims herself lucky because "spectacularful ideas are always […]
The Last Dragon
Publishers Weekly: Italian author De Mari turns the "prophecy genre" on its ear with this clever and humane fantasy/comedy. Young elf Yorsh lives in a world of constant rain, in an "Elf Camp" and threatened with dire punishment if he strays outside it. He befriends two humans, a woman and a hunter, and the three […]
Napoleon's Pyramids
Publishers Weekly: At the start of Dietrich's superb historical thriller, his swashbuckling hero, American Ethan Gage, who's living in Paris during the waning days of the French Revolution and was once apprenticed to Benjamin Franklin, wins a curious Egyptian medallion in a card game. Soon after, he's set upon by thieves, chased by the police, […]