No Pretty Pictures: a Child of War, by Anita Lobel. Published by Greenwillow Books, New York, in 1998, with an unfortunately drab and unexceptional cover (especially considering that the author is known as a children’s illustrator). The more recent 2008 reissue cover is much better. DISCLAIMER: I do not see this as a children’s or…
Goosebumps, the movie, released in 2015 by Sony Pictures. There are a few things that I need to say before I get to this movie. The first is that I do not allow my kids to read Goosebumps or watch the show, because they are too scary (and possibly I have some other reasons). That…
The Pendragon Trilogy, by Stephen R. Lawhead, which includes Taliesin, Merlin, and Arthur. I read old paperbacks from Avon Books which I received as hand-me-downs from my aunt. The original publication dates were 1987, 1988, and 1989. Turns out I was confused about these books. (Side note: Did you know there is a website to…
This wasn’t a list I was going to make. But then, I found myself with three adorable nephews and an Amazon Prime account for their birthdays. Now, I know some of the books that I have loved reading to my kids–and Lord knows I spent enough time researching the best and most classic books–but I…
The Frog and Toad series by Arnold Lobel, which we read in Harper’s Frog and Toad Storybook Treasury, which includes all four Frog and Toad books: Frog and Toad Are Friends Frog and Toad Together Frog and Toad All Year Days with Frog and Toad Arnold Lobel, 1933-1987, was a children’s book illustrator and writer.…
Socks, by Beverly Cleary, and first published in 1973. Seen here in the William Morrow and Company version illustrated by Tracy Dockray. Let me begin this review with a revelation: I hate cats. Let me also give a review spoiler: I loved this book. My loving this book came as a surprise to myself. I…
The Henry Huggins series of books by Beverly Cleary. They are, in chronological order, Henry Huggins (1950), Henry and Beezus (1952), Henry and Ribsy (1954), Henry and the Paper Route (1957), Henry and the Clubhouse (1962), and Ribsy. The Henry Huggins series contains the Ribsy series and meshes with the Ramona series. For our second–and…
Muggie Maggie, by Beverly Cleary. Published in 1991, by HarperCollins. I actually forgot that we read this book before Christmastime, which I think says a lot about the book itself. We were waiting for the next Henry Huggins books, so we decided to read this one-book Beverly Cleary, which we already had in our library.…
Woah, this list took me a long time to scrape together. Please don’t make too much of it (as I have not read the vast majority of the books), but I wanted a place to start with titles that didn’t appear in my largely American- and Western European-heavy best books lists. This list is not…
The Once and Future King and The Book of Merlyn, by T.H. White. This five-part series (four of which are included in The Once and Future King) was published as a complete novel, in 1958, and The Book of Merlyn posthumously and largely unedited, in 1977. The Book of Merlyn was always meant to be…
Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library, by Chris Grabenstein. This New York Times bestseller was published by Yearling in 2013. Both my daughter and I were attracted to this book on the shelves at bookstores and book sales. It wasn’t so much the look of the cover as its prominent placement coupled with the title: Escape…
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, by E.L. Konigsburg. I read the copy pictured here, a paperback from Atheneum Books. From the Mixed-Up Files won the Newbery Medal in 1967. This childhood classic had flown completely below my radar for my whole life until my daughter read it for school. Then it just…
It’s time for another other-media review. As long as it’s related to literature. This time, I watched a movie based on a famous literary character. Mr. Holmes, the 2015 movie based on the Arthur Conan Doyle character, Sherlock Holmes. The action of the movie takes place years after the books/stories end, although the literature does…
Embroideries, by Marjane Satrapi, 2005, Pantheon. This will be a quick review for a quick read. The review is rated PG13, for some of the content discussed. Marjane Satrapi is best known as the author of Persepolis, an autobiographical graphic novel about her life growing up in an educated, political family in Iran and her…
The Ramona series by Beverly Cleary, which is, in order: Beezus and Romona, Ramona the Pest, Ramona the Brave, Ramona and Her Father, Ramona and Her Mother, Ramona Quimby Age 8, Ramona Forever, and Ramona’s World. They were published from 1955 to 1999 (!) and include two Newbery Honors and one National Book Award. We…
Occasionally, I will do a review of a movie or a TV series if it is particularly literary. I’m pretty sure Merlin (2008-2012) counts, and I’m also pretty sure it was all an excuse to keep watching a TV series which I was almost immediately addicted to. At any rate, I have taken this post-Merlin…
I am headed into hibernation. Let me first apologize for the lack of posts on this blog. For a time, I have been too busy to post and, honestly, I haven’t known what to say. I haven’t known what to say for two reasons, and the most important is that I didn’t know what the…
The Bronte Sisters: The Brief Lives of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne, by junior biographer Catherine Reef, and published fairly recently by Clarion Books in 2012. When I ordered this book with pretty good reviews and a charming cover, I had no real idea what it was. I mean, I guess I knew it was a…
The Land of Stories series, by Chris Colfer, published from 2012-2015 by Little Brown. The series consists of four books so far, and Colfer says the series will end with the fifth book, assumed to be published in 2016. I read the series because my daughter–and just about every other kid her age–is in to…
Continuing to list the Best Books and breaking it up by genre, we have now made our way to nonfiction and journalism. (Then later I added science, because honestly I love to read in this nonfiction category more than most the others.) Actually, I compiled this one long ago, but the length of the list…
the starving artist 