Please enable JavaScript
Print | Page 132 | LitPick Book Reviews
Print
Zen and the Art of Vampires: A Dark Ones Novel (Dark Ones series Book 6)
Zen and the Art of Vampires
Katie MacAlister
Is it possible to love two vampires at the same time?View our feature on Katie MacAlister’s Zen and the Art of Vampires.Pushing forty and alone, Pia Thomason heads to Europe on a singles tour, hoping to find romance. What she finds are two very handsome, very mysterious, and very undead men. And she learns that where vampires are concerned, love isn’t the only thing at stake.

Book Details

Knucklehead: Tall Tales and Almost True Stories of Growing up Scieszka
Knucklehead
Jon Scieszka
How did Jon Scieszka get so funny, anyway? Growing up as one of six brothers was a good start, but that was just the beginning. Throw in Catholic school, lots of comic books, lazy summers at the lake with time to kill, babysitting misadventures, TV shows, jokes told at family dinner, and the result is Knucklehead. Part memoir, part scrapbook, this hilarious trip down memory lane provides a unique glimpse into the formation of a creative mind and a free spirit.Watch a QuickTime trailer for this book.

Book Details

Kieron Smith, Boy
Kieron Smith, Boy
James Kelman
I had cousins at sea. One was in the Cadets. I was wanting to join. My maw did not want me to but my da said I could if I wanted, it was a good life and ye saved yer money, except if ye were daft and done silly things. He said it to me. I would just have to grow up first. James Kelman’s triumph in Kieron Smith, boy is to bring us completely inside the head of a child and remind us what strange and beautiful things happen in there. Here is the story of a boyhood in a large industrial city during a time of great social change. Kieron grows from age five to early adolescence amid the general trauma of everyday life—the death of a beloved grandparent, the move to a new home. A whole world is brilliantly realized: sectarian football matches; ferryboats on the river; the unfairness of being a younger brother; climbing drainpipes, trees, and roofs; dogs, cats, sex, and ghosts.  This is a powerful, often hilarious, startlingly direct evocation of childhood.

Book Details

Stolen
Stolen
Vivian Vande Velde
The same day that the villagers of Thornstowe finally hunt down a witch with a reputation for stealing children, a 12-year-old appears in the woods with no memory of her past. Is there a connection between Isabelle, the girl who doesn’t know who she is, and the girl the witch stole six years earlier? One of the few things Isabelle remembers is a chant that keeps running through her head: Old as dirt,dirty as dirt.Ugly as sin,mean as sin.Don’t let the old witch catch you! Could Isabelle have been stolen by the old witch of the woods, or has she lost her memory as the result of an accident? And what about the baby the witch stole right before the villagers attacked? Did either the witch or the baby survive the fire the villagers set? "Isabelle heard no sound beyond the faintest shivering of leaves in a gentle breeze. No sound of pursuit. But surely something was wrong, or she would know who and where she was. So she resumed running. But it wasn’t as effortless as before. Her worry weighed her down as she tried to list the things she knew—and found the list of things she didn't know longer by far."

Book Details

Out of Reach
Out of Reach
V.M. Jones
Pip dreads every soccer match. His father is always there, yelling and arguing, pushing him to be more like his older brother a winner. Plus, there's the girl next door who outshines him on the field and overlooks him off of it. Then one day, Pip stumbles into a new world inside a rock-climbing gym. He even stumbles into a new, cooler name: Phil. But he still has to find a way to break free from the old world and his father's grip. An award-winning New Zealand author makes her U.S. debut with this powerful novel. "And in the unreal twilight of the deserted Igloo, it was as if someone else had taken over my body . . . and my mind. Suddenly I wasn't Pip McLeod, forever messing up. Pip; Pippin; Piphead; Pipsqueak: battling to be the son Dad wanted, and never even coming close. No-this was a new me, Philip McLeod, who'd been hidden away somewhere deep inside . . . who with each new handhold, was slowly but surely clambering his way out."

Book Details

Devil May Ride (Ghost Dusters #2)
Devil May Ride
Wendy Roberts
Sadie Novak, the owner of a crime scene cleanup company who is gifted with the second sight, comes face-to-face with evil and a gang of meth-deprived motorcyclists, when she finds evidence of a chilling cult ritual in an abandoned meth lab. Original.

Book Details

Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Alan Gibbons, Leo Brown
Ten-year-old Henry has just gotten the job of his life―assistant to Charles Darwin on a voyage of the HMS Beagle. He will help Darwin collect all the creatures that fly, scuttle, and leap on this expedition to faraway lands. Little does he know that it will be one of the greatest scientific expeditions of all time! As the trip gets under way, Henry records everything he sees and does in his diary, providing readers with a firsthand account of the famous adventure. Fictionally told but based on facts, Charles Darwin puts an innovative spin on the story and accomplishments of the most famous naturalist in history, just in time for Darwin's 200th birthday.

Book Details

Stitchin' and Pullin': A Gee's Bend Quilt (Picture Book)
Stitchin' and Pullin'
Cozbi A. Cabrera, Patricia McKissack
MOTHER AND DAUGHTER, grandmother and granddaughter, aunt and niece, friend and friend. For a hundred years, generations of women from Gee’s Bend have quilted together, sharing stories, trading recipes, singing hymns—all the while stitchin’ and pullin’ thread through cloth. Every day Baby Girl listens, watches, and waits, until she’s called to sit at the quilting frame. Piece by piece, she puzzles her quilt together—telling not just her story, but the story of her family, the story of Gee’s Bend, and the story of her ancestors’ struggle for freedom.

Book Details

Cool Jewels
Cool Jewels
Naomi Fujimoto
Designing and making jewelry is so much fun, teenagers can’t get enough of it. Cool Jewels: Beading Projects for Teens not only gives the lowdown on tools, techniques, beads, and findings, it also presents 35 irresistible step-by-step projects sure to get teens hooked on the hobby.

Book Details

Slant
Slant
Laura E. Williams
Thirteen-year-old Lauren, a Korean American adoptee, is best friends with the prettiest — and tallest — girl in the school, Julie, who has an endless amount of confidence. Lauren, on the other hand, has been saving for years to pay for a special eye surgery that will deepen the crease of her eyelids. It's not that she wants to look like everyone else in her suburban Connecticut school; she'd just be happy if kids stopped calling her "slant" and "gook." Up until now she's been able to ignore the insults, but when the cutest boy in her class calls her "slant," she realizes she needs to do something about her "nickname." When she convinces her reluctant father to consent to the eye operation, Lauren suddenly finds herself faced with a challenge: should she get the operation that might make her more confident and popular, or can she find that confidence within herself? Laura Williams' sensitive, beautifully written story offers a powerful lesson to young readers whose self-esteem depends too much on how they look.

Book Details

Pages



RECENT BOOK REVIEWS