Books

The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England by Dan Jones. Viking. 2013. Reviewed from ARC from publisher. Vacation reads (aka, when I talk about books for grownups and post them before holidays.) It’s About: The designated heir of England dies in a shipwreck; England is plunged into civil war as descendants of [...]

BookExpo is next week! Here are some of the adult books with possible teen appeal that I’m excited to see on the show floor. In no particular order (and with the understanding that cover art and signing/appearance times & places are subject to change): Guests on Earth by Lee Smith (Algonquin, Oct.) begins in New [...]

Children’s book author and former teacher Kate Messner has always had a passion for sharing books with kids, so when she recommended Hena Khan’s Golden Domes and Silver Lanternsto her Twitter followers for its portrayal of Islam, she did not expect the backlash she received. A few days after the original message, someone who does not follow her on Twitter replied with the below, continuing an intense multiday exchange with her about what he believes to be “the real Islam.”

Li’l Jinx started out as a gag comic that ran in different Archie Comics publications; the one-page stories revolved around the rather strong-willed Jinx, her father, and a small coterie of friends. The comics were funny but not particularly deep. In writing the teen-age Jinx stories, J. Torres has kept the humor but given the [...]

So does this sound like something that could get the teen and tween comics fans you know into nonfiction? Sure it does.

Penny Warner's The Code Busters 2: The Haunted Lighthouse won the 2012 Agatha Award. Capstone is adding 60 more Presidential titles to the K–3 PebbleGo Biographies module in August 2013. ABDO’s will publish library editions of IDW’s "Jurassic Park" and "Star Trek" graphic novels this fall.

Writing about humor is a good way to suck all the fun out of it, so please—feel free to skip straight to the booklist.

Last week, Angela talked about buzz books–those books that everyone seems to be talking about; this week, I want to talk about the other end of the spectrum–books that no one is talking about.  None of the three books reviewed below has been reviewed (yet) by a library journal, nor have I been able to [...]

This sequel to Lynch's Iceman (1994) is a sophisticated look at a teen's maturation through a series of dynamic life changes.