Congratulations to Mary Ann and Mommy Reads! Mary Ann has won our new On the Radar: Street Style series and Mommy Reads has won our new On the Radar: Defend and Protect series!This week we’re giving away a set of five new picture books from Carolrhoda Books and Millbrook Press! One lucky winner will receive […]Read more "Free Book Friday!"

Yesterday Kate Hosford, author of the Carolrhoda picture books Big Bouffant and Big Birthday, pointed me to a blog post by Laura Purdie Salas. One of Laura’s daughters shares the name Annabelle with the daringly nonconformist protagonist of Kate’s books, and although the real-world Annabelle is 19, it turns out they also share a fondness […]Read more "Who Says Picture Books Are Just For Kids?"

As readers of Frozen Secrets already know, Antarctica’s subglacial lakes—those bodies of liquid water that lie thousands of feet beneath continental ice sheets—are truly Earth’s unexplored frontiers. They are time capsules containing pristine examples of environments that have been unchanged and uncontaminated since the ice above them formed millions of years ago. In Frozen Secrets, […]Read more "Under the Ice"

We have referred to the book A Leaf Can Be . . . a couple of times on this blog, but I thought I’d spend a little more time on it today. In short, the book is a poetic exploration of the many roles leaves play all throughout the year. The text is by Laura […]Read more "A Leaf Can Be: Three in One Blow"

Congratulations to Wendy, Vividha, and CBarnett! They are the three lucky winners of No Crystal Stair written by Coretta Scott King Award-winning author Vaunda Micheaux Nelson and illustrated by Coretta Scott King Honor Award-winner R. Gregory Christie. This week one lucky winner will receive our new On the Radar: Street Style series and another lucky […]Read more "Free Book Friday!"

Last weekend, parts of Minnesota awoke to the beautiful sight of trees tricked out in white crystals.This effect is called hoar frost, but when the frost forms on objects like tree branches, apparently it’s also known as air hoar. In any case, the result was a magical array of trees of every shape and size, […]Read more "Beautiful Hoarfrost and Other Random Thoughts"

Graphic Universe is jazzed about its new release of the long-standing Lerner favorite—The Girl Who Owned A City, written by O.T. Nelson. This time it’s in full graphic novel format in which intense colors and magnificent artwork splash the pages and tell the iconic story of a girl named Lisa Nelson who suddenly finds herself […]Read more "The Girl Who Owned A City: The Graphic Novel"

I just flew in from the Reading Recovery conference, and boy are my arms tired!  Last week in Digital-Readers for Beginners, Part One, I wrote about some digital-reader ownership statistics, and highlighted the typical features of eBook readers and tablet computers. Today, we’ll cover the following topics: 1. iOS vs. Android2. The concept of the […]Read more "Digital-Readers for Beginners, Part Two"

http://bit.ly/oJs4nF/ I heard part of a fascinating interview (link above) with author and book critic Lev Grossman on public radio recently. He talked about the popularity of fantasy fiction and the blurring of genres, and about two of his own fantasy novels (The Magicians and The Magician King). Since I myself don’t read much fantasy, […]Read more "Fantasy Life"