Best Frints in the Whole Universe By Antoinette Portis Best frints, Yelfred and Omek, live on an obscure and distant planet, Boborp. They have been frints ever since they were little blobbies. Yelfred and Omek do everything together: from…
Category: friendship
Picture Book Roundup-August 2016
Maggie McGillicuddy’s Eye for Trouble by Susan Hughes and illustrations by Brooke Kerrigan is a delightful story of a friendship between an elderly woman and a young boy who lives next door. The subject of the book is not “race”…
Review: My Sister Rosa by Justine Larbalestier
On the day that seventeen-year-old Che’s little sister Rosa was born, his mother told him that he was going to have to look out for Rosa. His father added, “Protect her from the world.” But now that Rosa is ten,…
The Story of an Ally: A Review of She Stood for Freedom
With the focus on Black Lives Matter comes the discussion of what it means to be a white ally. The blog site Reading While White addresses the responsibility of allies from the perspective of a half dozen white librarians who…
Review: The Quickest Kid In Clarksville
At the 1960 Olympic Games, African American sprinter Wilma Rudolph became the first woman from the United States to win three gold medals at the same Olympics. Rudolph grew up in Clarksville, Tennessee, a segregated town. After her victories, Rudolph…
Escape to New York: A Hundred Hours of Night
During the devastation of Hurricane Sandy, the Dutch author Anna Woltz and I switched places. She was hunkered down in New York City while I followed the news from the safety (and sunny weather) of Lisbon, Portugal. But she turned…
Do I Stay or Do I Go? A Review of My Best Everything
Luisa (Lulu) Mendez is on the road to success. A top graduate of her rural Virginia high school, she’s leaving for the University of San Diego in the fall. Except for one small problem. Her father made a bad business…
Stolen Stash: A Billie B. Mystery by Sally Rippon and Aki Fukuoka
“Stolen Stash: A Billie B. Mystery” By Sally Rippon and Aki Fukuoka Reviewed by Linda Boyden Author Rippon’s early reader series portrays the day-to-day drama inherent in elementary schools. The spunky main character, Billie Brown, her best friend, Jack,…
Review: American Girls by Alison Umminger
My first Manson girl was Leslie Van Houten, the homecoming princess with the movie-star smile. She was on death row at nineteen for putting a knife into the already-dead body of some poor, random woman for the lamest reason that…
I Identify with The Anti-Socialites
Attending the Brooklyn Book Festival’s Children’s Day for the first time last September, I came across a lone booth in the middle of the plaza. There Alicia and Tameka McKenzie were selling their self-published series for middle graders, The Anti-Socialites,…