Summer Reading Recommendations 2013
Need suggestions for beach reading or books to bring to summer camp? We’ve hand-picked some new favorites, all published 2012–2013, that are ideal for the season. Download a free PDF perfect for sharing with teachers, parents, and of course, kids.
Featured Posts
More on the 2013 Boston Globe–Horn Book Award winners
Since the announcement on June 1, we've been celebrating our 2013 Boston Globe–Horn Book Award winners and Honor books with special web extras. Here's a cheat sheet! Picture Book resources on winner Building Our House: Five Questions for … [Read More...]
My favorite BGHB winner, staff edition
We asked our staff and reviewers to name their favorite Boston Globe–Horn Book Award winners. Choosing one favorite proved to be a bigger challenge than we expected — see Kitty Flynn's six answers and Martha Parravano's passionate response. … [Read More...]
My favorite BGHB winner, reviewer edition
We asked our staff and reviewers to name their favorite Boston Globe–Horn Book Award winners. Here's what our reviewers had to say: Betty Carter: Holes by Louis Sachar (Foster/Farrar, 1999 Fiction Award winner). The circular nature of this … [Read More...]
Who are you wearing?
Oh, I HATE costume parties. It's enough trouble to get dressed, never mind dressed UP, never mind dressed up AS SOMEBODY ELSE. Be that as it may, ALSC is apparently asking attendees to this year's Newbery-Caldecott banquet to acknowledge the 75th … [Read More...]
More on the 2013 Boston Globe–Horn Book Award winners
Since the announcement on June 1, we've been celebrating our 2013 Boston Globe–Horn Book Award winners and Honor books with special web extras. Here's a cheat sheet! Picture Book resources on winner Building Our House: Five Questions for … [Read More...]
May picture book reviews of the week
On May 6, we posted Elissa Gershowitz's review of Water in the Park: A Book About Water & the Times of the Day by Emily Jenkins, illustrated by Stephanie Graegin. Loosely based on Prospect Park in Brooklyn, this is a book I want to … [Read More...]
From the editor — June 2013
Dan Brown’s Inferno is not going to last me much longer, so I’m glad Katie Bircher and Elissa Gershowitz have put together the Horn Book’s annual Summer Reading Recommendations. There are choices for all tastes and ages here (and adults … [Read More...]
Review of the Week
Review of Better to Wish
Better to Wish [Family Tree] by Ann M. Martin Intermediate, Middle School Scholastic 231 pp. 5/13 978-0-545-35942-9 $16.99 e-book ed. 978-0-545-53926-5 $16.99 The typical historical fiction set during the Great Depression is a story of financial hardship — but it’s not lack of money that’s the issue here, in this first of what will be four novels about succeeding generations of women. For eight-year-old Abby and her family, the decade of the 1930s … [Read More...]
App Review of the Week
Review of The Skull in the Rock e-book
Danielle J. Ford reviewed Dr. Lee R. Berger and Marc Aronson's nonfiction title The Skull in the Rock: How a Scientist, a Boy, and Google Earth Opened a New Window on Human Origins (National Geographic) in the November/December 2012 Horn Book Magazine. The conversational text tells how Berger, a paleontologist, used Google Earth satellite images to discover a group of collapsed caves in the area of South Africa known as the Cradle of Humankind — an area previously rich in hominin fossils. … [Read More...]
Recommended Books
Picture book father-son reading recommendations
Celebrate Father's Day with a good picture book! Here are our recommendations for fathers and their sons — or daughters — to read together. What picture book would you recommend for a father-son … [Read More...]
May picture book reviews of the week
On May 6, we posted Elissa Gershowitz's review of Water in the Park: A Book About Water & the Times of the Day by Emily Jenkins, illustrated by Stephanie Graegin. Loosely based on … [Read More...]
Review of Better to Wish
Better to Wish [Family Tree] by Ann M. Martin Intermediate, Middle School Scholastic 231 pp. 5/13 978-0-545-35942-9 $16.99 e-book ed. 978-0-545-53926-5 $16.99 The … [Read More...]
Dragon-centric fantasy
2013 Boston Globe–Horn Book Fiction Honor book Seraphina, written by Rachel Hartman, follows a protagonist navigating the treacherous political territory between dragonkind and human society. For … [Read More...]
Books mentioned in the June 2013 issue of Notes from the Horn Book
Five questions for Ann M. Martin Better to Wish [Family Tree] by Ann M. Martin, Scholastic, 10–14 years. Middle-grade family stories The Thing About Luck by Cynthia Kadohata; illus. by Julia … [Read More...]
Interviews
Five questions for Ann M. Martin
Ann Martin fans, rejoice: she’s back, with an addictive new middle-grade series. Readers will find familiar hallmarks of Martin’s earlier work: the intimacy with which readers get to know the … [Read More...]
A whole bunch of questions for Lucy Knisley
In her adult graphic-novel memoir Relish: My Life in the Kitchen (First Second, April 2013), Lucy Knisley portrays specific periods of her life and their associated “taste-memories” in a series of … [Read More...]
Kathleen Krull and Paul Brewer on The Beatles Were Fab (and They Were Funny)
In the May/June 2013 Horn Book Magazine, reviewer Robin Smith asked Kathleen Krull and Paul Brewer, authors of The Beatles Were Fab (and They Were Funny), about the Beatles' music in their own lives. … [Read More...]
Five questions for Emily Jenkins
Author Emily Jenkins seems equally at home in picture books and intermediate fiction (and even — shh! — in YA, under nom de plume E. Lockhart). Like several of Emily’s previous books, her … [Read More...]
Five questions for Jeanne Birdsall
The first book about the feisty Penderwick sisters, The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy, won the National Book Award in 2005. Since then, the family … [Read More...]
