‘My Friend and I’: The Only Conflict Book You'll Ever Need

Sometimes, as I see more and more books hitting my mailbox, I wonder how many of them are really necessary. This feeling particularly comes to the fore when I find picture books that, while they may be in themselves perfectly inoffensive, even useful, do what an earlier book did—only not as well.

It occurred to me as I looked at yet another book about preschoolers arguing over a toy and then making up that, really, the only book we need is My Friend and I, by Lisa Jahn-Clough.

The text is masterfully simple, establishing its emotional territory with direct ...

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Getting a Little Tense…

I think that if I open one more teen novel that is written in the present tense I will scream.

I know it's not just me; a conversation about the current present-tense trend dominated discussion on Child_Lit, a listserv devoted to children's and teen literature. Numbers bear out this sense of a trend. Three database queries on reviews of kids' books that contain the phrase "present-tense" or "present tense" produce the following results:

• 2002: 16 reviews
• 2007: 13 reviews
• 2012: 35 reviews—and keep in mind that the year isn't over yet.

While this is hardly scientific ...

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Unca Carl

Listening to the news from Comic-Con this past weekend sent me rummaging around in the ever-shrinking stack of boxes left over from my most recent move. Beneath a box of family photographs I have yet to exhume and next to a box of my mother's best china was one of my real treasures: My box of Uncle Scrooge comics.

Anyone who, like me, grew up with the wit and wisdom of Carl Barks, duck artist extraordinaire, will be experiencing a warm, happy feeling somewhere in their bellies at the thought of Unca Carl.

Read our list of top 7 ...

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O Canada!: 9 Books for Canada Day

Take a close look at this Canadian $5 bill. Yes, it's got hockey players on it, but if you look very closely at the left-hand side, you will see some words: "Les hivers de mon enfance étaient des saison longues, longues. Nous vivions en trois lieux: l’école, l’église et la patinoire; mais la vraie vie était sur la patinoire. / The winters of my childhood were long, long seasons. We lived in three places—the school, the church and the skating rink—but our real life was on the skating rink."

This is not just a paean to ...

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Midsummer Rites

"I write this sitting in the kitchen sink." This is the unforgettable opening line of Dodie Smith's mid-20th-century bildungsroman, I Capture the Castle, which my eighth-grade English teacher lent to me one spring, saying, "I think you'll like this."

I did. It was one of those life-changing teacher-to-student moments—I was never quite the same after. I have returned to it many times and pressed it on others as my English teacher pressed it on me. And I think of it every midsummer without fail, for reasons that will become obvious.

Read more new and notable books for ...

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Notable iPad Apps and E-Books

With the App Store growing day by day, it can be hard to keep track of the best new titles. We are pleased to present just a few of the best apps and e-books for children and teens that we've recently reviewed. Please check back often for our complete iPad coverage.

Read more new and notable children's books this June.

OVER IN THE OCEAN: In a Coral Reef 

Marianne Berkes
Illustrator: Jeanette Canyon
Developer: Malachi Bazan
Developer: Dawn Publications

This beautifully illustrated counting and singalong app version of the 2004 book introduces young readers to the creatures of ...

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Feminism, Regency Style, in ‘Keeping the Castle’

In Keeping the Castle, Patrice Kindl resurrects the Regency romance, exposing the stark economic reality facing the 18th-century woman but leavening it with tremendous helpings of her signature wit.

Read our teen blogger Bookshelves of Doom's take on 'Keeping the Castle.'

Beautiful Althea Crawley, 17, lives with her mother, little brother and odious stepsisters in a crumbling castle that's about to fall off the Yorkshire cliffs into the ocean. Impoverished, their only hope is for Althea to marry a rich man—a goal so far thwarted by Althea's sharp tongue. When the eminently marriageable, new Lord Boring ...

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Jill Biden Reaches out to Military Families

In Don't Forget, God Bless Our Troops, second lady Jill Biden tells a very personal story, narrating in the voice of her granddaughter Natalie the events of the year that her daddy, Beau Biden, was deployed overseas.

Sensitively, Biden chronicles Natalie and her little brother Hunter's fears for their father as well the ways their lives went on. Biden has teamed with Michelle Obama in the Joining Forces initiative, to educate Americans about the sacrifices military families endure, and in keeping with this effort, she provides a wealth of resources to help readers help military families.

Find more ...

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Pushing the Sexual Envelope

When it comes to sex and books for teens, the envelope has been expanding for decades. It was only a matter of time before Cath’s grave examination of Ralph in Judy Blume's Forever… opened the door for actual oral sex. Boys have been happily getting blow jobs for the past several years.

Read Bookshelves of Doom's take on Susane Colasanti’s 'Keep Holding On.'

2005 was something of a banner year for fellatio. In Anyone but You, by Lara M. Zeises, protagonist Critter gets a blow job (in a book we summed up as "[e]ngaging but ...

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Jean Craighead George, 1919-2012

Somewhere, a wolf is howling. Jean Craighead George, author of over 100 books, mostly about the natural world and mostly for children, has died.

Find more books by Jean Craighead George.

It seemed that the world had just begun to pull itself together and move on after the death of Maurice Sendak last week when we learned of the passing of another literary lion. Like Sendak, she was one of Ursula Nordstrom's geniuses, another sad coincidence.

It was Nordstrom who took on Julie of the Wolves, which was inspired by a trip the journalist took to Barrow, Alaska, to ...

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Thanks, Mom

The littlest one on the left—that's my mother as a toddler with her two older sisters. For the past 80-plus years, reading has been how my mother defined herself. Now 82, she spends most of her time back in her youth, remembering growing up with a mother who loved books in a household stuffed with them.

Read more new and notable children's books this May.

When I remind her of what I do, she says, "Oh, my mother would have loved hearing about your job. She just loved getting books for us." The classics, of course: Alice ...

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Maurice Sendak, 1928-2012

Did you feel the earth wobble this morning? Maurice Sendak died, as we all must. But his contributions to the world were more than most of us can hope to make, and the loss hits hard.

From the boisterous ebullience of his illustrations for Ruth Krauss' A Hole Is to Dig to the gleeful subversion of In the Night Kitchen, from the gothic foreboding of Outside Over There to the plaintive, determined innocence of his illustrations for Tony Kushner's Brundibar, he delighted and provoked, often at the same time.

See all of Maurice Sendak’s books reviewed by Kirkus ...

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Just for Fun: 'Bitterblue'

I thought I was being so clever, taking a job as, in effect, a professional reader. I had already arranged my career as a librarian as much as possible so that it was in sync with my favorite hobby—why not go whole hog?

What I didn't realize was that becoming a professional reader would effectively take away what most readers love about reading—that it is recreation.

Let's stop right here to dispel a few myths. Nobody in the book business does what laypeople imagine we do, that is, sit around all day reading and eating bonbons ...

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The Pain of Picking Just One

If you notice that the next couple issues of Kirkus don't appear on time—or at all—here's why: business cards.

We are all getting new business cards, which is great. But in addition to the usual elements (name, address, telephone number, etc.), we were asked to add a very personal datum: our favorite book.

"ONE? Favorite? Book?" I protested. How on earth could I be expected to select one single title from among the grillions that I have read and loved over the 40-plus years of my reading life?

Read more of our favorite books this month ...

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'Hunger Games' the Movie!

After all the Hype, how's the Movie?

Several weeks ago, I bought advance tickets to the midnight premiere of The Hunger Games. Like most American households with teen readers, ours has been caught up in the hype for months. Would the movie honor or overlook its source, a book my daughter, like grillions of other kids, loved?

(This is no idle speculation. When I took her to see the movie adaptation of The Lightning Thief, she walked out of the theater rather than endure the bastardization of a sacred text. At today's ticket prices, that hurt. If the ...

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Another Dystopia, Anyone?

Success breeds imitation.

Ten years ago, you couldn't walk past a children's new-releases shelf in the library or bookstore without seeing at least half a dozen Harry Potter knockoffs. Five years ago, you'd have the same experience in the teen section with Twilight imitators. My favorite was the rebadged Wuthering Heights that sported a cover that made absolutely, positively sure readers knew they were supposed to make the connection: In addition to the iconic sexualized red item on a black background—in this case, a rose—there was the notation that it was "Bella and Edward's ...

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In Appreciation of Assistant Pig-Keepers

In my last post, I sang the praises of Suzanne Collins' Underland Chronicles, which came to mind as a suggestion for a colleague's child who is waiting with bated breath for the next Rick Riordan book. Because I never am content with just one suggestion, I also recommended Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain.

Read more new and notable children's books this March.

I first encountered Taran Assistant Pig-Keeper in elementary school when I picked up The Book of Three. I instantly identified with the frustrated boy, stuck at Caer Dallben taking care of a pig when he ...

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Flying High with Gregor the Overlander

Recently a colleague asked if I could get an extra advance copy of the newest book in Rick Riordan's Heroes of Olympus series. It appears his young son had powered through Riordan's first Greek-gods-in-the-modern-world series, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, and the first two books of the second. He's dying to read The Mark of Athena, and he doesn't want to wait until October to get it.

Read more new and notable children's books.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to help them out with this, as Riordan and his publisher are not in the habit ...

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Lazarus Books

One of the tragic things about loving children's books is seeing your favorites go out of print.

Fortunately, some never will. Where the Wild Things Are, the Little House books and The Very Hungry Caterpillar all come to mind. Oftentimes, these survivors are treated to iteration after iteration in anniversary or other special editions.

Get ready this year for A Wrinkle in Time (50th), The Little House (70th) and And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street (75th). Whitman has breathed new life into Maj Lindman’s books about Flicka, Ricka and Dicka, reissuing Flicka, Ricka and ...

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Turning Family History into Everybody's History

Coretta Scott King Award–winner Vaunda Micheaux Nelson didn't realize until she was an adult that the crowded Harlem bookstore her great uncle owned was one of the centers of the civil rights movement in New York City. Malcolm X., Muhammad Ali and Maya Angelou all visited it.

In No Crystal Stair: A Documentary Novel of the Life and Work of Lewis Michaux, Harlem Bookseller, illustrated by R. Gregory Christie, she delves into her own family's history, braiding together reminiscences, primary sources and the voices of composite characters to create a three-dimensional image of an extraordinary mover and ...

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