June 2011
1 post
5 tags
The Boy at the End of the World: Greg van Eekhout
There’s no shortage of dystopias on the shelves-and no shortage of books where our current society has collapsed, leaving something sad and twisted to struggle in the remains. But in all these books, humanity survives.
At the beginning of The Boy at the End of the World, humanity is dead. There is no society to struggle against, and no rivalries to explore. Our protagonist is...
April 2010
2 posts
2 tags
A Framework for Understanding Poverty: Ruby K....
I recently finished reading A Framework for Understanding Poverty by Ruby K. Payne, and I was disappointed. The book is overly simplistic, the bullet-heavy format makes the book feel like an oversized set of workshop notes, and there just isn’t enough research to back up her assertions. In this book, poor students are defined solely by how they differ from middle-class students. The...
4 tags
Elsewhere Chronicles: Nykko & Bannister
There’s little original about The Elsewhere Chronicles’ story-four friends are trapped in another world and must find a way home, while fighting monsters and a mysterious, shadowy warlord. Originally published in French, the fourth volume has recently been translated into English-so consider this a review of the series so far.
The art is bright, colourful, and expressive, a...
March 2010
6 posts
4 tags
Secrets of the Fire Sea: Stephen Hunt
Stephen Hunt has written four novels in the Steampunk universe first described in The Court of the the Air. All of his novels are loud, exuberant affairs, with a self-conscious complexity that echoes Victorian literature and an unselfconscious love of stuff and spectacle that echoes-absolutely nothing else I’ve ever read. In The Court of the Air, you’ll find giant, punch-card...
4 tags
Skim: Mariko and Jullian Tamaki
Skim has received a slew of rewards, including being named ”Best Illustrated Children’s Book” by the New York Times. The story follows 16-year old Skim in the months after she breaks her arm “falling off her bike” (actually, tripping over her altar and landing on her mother’s candelabra). Along the way, a classmate commits suicide, Skim engages in an...
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Burger Boy: Alan Durant
Benny loves Burgers. In fact, he loves them so much that he eats nothing BUT burgers. One day, his mother warns him that if he keeps eating so many burgers, he’ll turn into one-and one day, he does!
Witty rhymes and colorful illustrations are the main appeal of this simple story. The illustrations are childish, but not simple or ineffective. The sequence where Benny turns into a Burger is...
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Wake Trilogy: Lisa McMann
16-year old Jamie has developed an unusual-and unpredictable-power. She is drawn into the dreams of anyone around her-riding along with the student dozing in study hall, the man sleeping on the subway. When she’s drawn into the startlingly violent dreams of a classmate, it becomes clear that she’ll have to take control of her powers in order to solve the mystery.
The Wake Trilogy...
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Raising Your Own Pet Monster: Élise Gravel
This is one of those books I feel guilty about reviewing-I fished it out of the remainder bin at Book Warehouse and it doesn’t seem to be on sale through Amazon.com . It’s not a particularly unique book-there are probably hundreds of Monster Bestiaries and Field Guides, any of which could be used as the basis for a great language art lesson.
However, Raising Your Own Pet Monster is a...
January 2010
4 posts
4 tags
Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac: Gabrielle Zevin
**Posts will be infrequent and short for the foreseeable future-I’m on practicum!**
Naomi and her friend Will flipped a coin, and Naomi lost. That meant that Naomi had to get back inside to fetch the yearbook camera. On her way down the steps, she falls and hits her head-erasing two years of her life (the camera, ironically, survived).
I wasn’t a huge fan of Zevins first book,...
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Shiver: Maggie Stiefvater
Why can’t they all be this good?
When she was a small child, Grace was attacked by one wolf, and saved by another. ”Her” wolf has reappeared every winter since then-it watches her, and she watches it right back. When a boy dies in the woods, it sets of a chain of events that reveals that some wolves were born as men-and that gives “her wolf”, one last chance to be...
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Yotsuba&!: Kiyohiko Amuma
Similar in tone to Beverly Cleary’s Ramona, Yotsuba&! is full of good humour and charm.
Yotsuba and her daddy have just moved to a new neighbourhood-and Yotsuba, who’s lived a rather sheltered life up to this point is determined to enjoy everything. She’s going to draw pictures and catch cicadas and ring the doorbells so that all the people come out. She’s going to...
3 tags
The Pencil: Allan Ahlberg, Bruce Ingman
The pencil drew a boy (the boy’s name is Banjo)-and the boy needs a dog, and the dog needs a cat, and they all need someplace to live. And they’re all black and white-obviously the pencil needs to draw a paintbrush that can colour them in. But what’s this? An eraser?
The Pencil is an imaginative and funny story, simply and straightforwardly narrated in a way that reminded me...
2 tags
Blue Bloods: Melissa De La Cruz
How can a book published in 2006 have aged so badly?
Chuyler Van Alen never fit in with the blue-bloods at her prestigious New York City private school-so why does she find herself so affected by the sudden death of a classmate? Why is the most popular boy in the school suddenly taking an interest in her? And who-or what-is running the mysterious “Committee”?
This is a confused...
December 2009
16 posts
2 tags
The Sissy Duckling: Harvey Fierstein & Henry Cole
A touching story about accepting people for who they really are-the exuberant, cartoonish illustrations and honest approach keep this book from being overly cloying.
Elmer was the happiest duckling in the whole forest, doing all the things he loved to do-including painting pictures, playing make-believe, and decorating cookies. He was, according to the other ducklings, a great big sissy.
...
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NurtureShock: Po Bronson, Ashley Merryman
NurtureShock promises to use the latest research on child development to explain some of the mysteries of childhood-and to explain where parents and teachers make mistakes. Teachers should already be familiar with a lot of the material in NurtureShock-although it’s so engagingly presented and packed with recent scientific research that that they might want to read it anyway.
Luckily,...
The Thirteenth Child: Patricia C. Wrede
An interesting set-up for fantasy adventure-but where’s the rest of the book?
On a wild frontier, where giant mammoths roam the plains and dragons soar overhead, each settlement is protected by a magical barrier. Though most can learn some magic, the most powerful wizards are the seventh sons of seventh sons. But if you’re going to have seven sons, you have to expect to have some...
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Dark Sons: Nikki Grimes
Sam idolized his father, and can’t understand why he left. Can’t understand why he remarries (to a younger white woman). Why he has a child with her, why they move away. His fury threatens to burn him up. In parallel narration, the biblical Ishmael, the son of Abraham and the maidservant Hagar, is banished to wander in the desert after Abraham’s wife bears a child. The...
3 tags
Re-Gifters: Mike Carey, Sonny Liew, Marc Hempel
A tale of hapkido, first love, and recycled gifts-a graphic novel with real heart.
Dik Seong Jen-better known as “Dixie”-lives on the edge of LA’s Koreatown, where she practices Hapkido both as a an emotional outlet and as a way of connecting with her culture-but ever since she developed a crush on Adam, a fellow Hapkido student, her concentration has been shot. When she spends...
3 tags
Toon Books
Some things should just sell themselves.
TOON Books is easily one of the most interesting lines of children’s literature being published right now. The concept is simple-these are easy readers, written with a limited vocabulary, in a comic book format, complete with panels and word balloons, created by some of the masters of comics, like Art Spiegalman (Pulitizer-Prize winning creator of...
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Positively: Courtney Sheinmel
A sensitive portrayal of an HIV+ girl that never falls prey to sensationalism or slowed down by its educational content.
Emerson Price is 13 years old. Diagnosed with HIV when she was 4 years old, she takes medication three times a day and is otherwise healthy-but the medication didn’t work for Emerson’s mother. Newly motherless, Emerson moves in with her father and stepmother-but...
3 tags
The Knife of Never Letting Go: Patrick Ness
Full of ideas, pushes the genre in all the right directions-but dragged down by some clunky, clunky narration.
At this rate, I’ll never get around to reviewing Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games (in short, it’s splendid), but I figure that a book popular enough to be sold at WalMart doesn’t need my help. But say you (or a student) have already read The Hunger Games and...
2 tags
Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key: Jack Gantos
A sympathetic, detail-rich portrait of a boy with severe behaviour issues.
This book has been out and earning recommendations for years-there’s probably not a library system out there that doesn’t have a copy or two banging around-but somehow, I’ve managed to miss it-until now.
Joey Pigza describes himself as wired. Offered only “dud meds” and unable to control his...
Little Mouse's Big Book of Fears: Emily Gravett
More multimedia project than straight-forward storybook, the Big Book of Fears is a beautiful object that children are sure to savour.
Little Mouse has found a workbook dedicated to helping humans work through their fears-and since she’s afraid of so many things, decides to fill it out herself.
I love the way Emily Gravett draws animals-her Little Mouse is round, soft, and enduringly...
Listology: Lisa Nola
A great source for writing prompts.
Today, we’ll be kicking off something that I’d like to be make a regular feature here at Library Binding-call it Tangent Tuesday-where I review an “adult” book, website, or other resource that may be of interest to the classroom teacher.
Lisa Nola’s Listography is a website that has spawned a series of quirky journals. Either...
3 tags
Perfect, Lush, and Bounce: Three Novels by...
Tightly written problem novels that demonstrate a mastery of first-person narration.
Natasha Friend published her Perfect, her first book for young adults, in 2004. Since then, she’s published two more novels, Lush and Bounce, and plans to publish a fourth, For Keeps, in April of 2010. She’s won multiple awards and garnered considerable press-and she deserves every bit of it.
...
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Gadgets: Amazon Kindle G2
In a moment of pure gadget lust and unbridled impulse, I ordered the newest Amazon Kindle within a week of it becoming available in Canada. I’ve had it in hand for a couple weeks now, so the gloss should have worn off-but I’m still in love with it. The Kindle is a great device, and anyone who reads a lot of books should consider picking one up.
The size and weight of the kindle-1/3...
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Tunnels: Roderick Gordon, Brian Williams
A classic Boy’s Own Adventure story with an inventive setting, let down by thin characters and pacing issues.
Will Burrows shares a love for amateur archaeological excavations with his eccentric father, the proprietor of a small museum of historical curiosities. When his father goes missing and his family falls apart, Will must descend into a terrifying underground world…one vaster...
2 tags
Software: Delicious Library 2
I’m constantly adding to my library, picking up books in odd places. Sometimes, things get a bit unwieldy, so I’ve been testing out Delicious Library 2, a piece of software for Mac (sorry PC users!) that promsises to help you keep your collections organized.
Delicious Library’s biggest selling point is it’s ability to use your Mac’s built-in camera as a barcode...