Who’d have thought that the trash we put out once a week had such rich history?This entertaining and informative book illuminates one of civilization’s difficult realities: the generating of waste of various forms. It’s a timely topic, of course, but…
Author: petermarino
Peter is an English professor at SUNY Adirondack in Queensbury, New York where he teaches writing, speech, and the occasional literature class. He won the SUNY Chancellor's Award in 2006 for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activity. His first young adult novel, Dough Boy, about a fat and self-conscious but very funny high school sophomore, was published by Holiday House in October 2005 and is now available in paperback. It was nominated for the American Library Association’s Best Books for Young Adults in 2006. His latest young adult novel, also with Holiday House, is Magic and Misery, about a teenage girl trying to balance her life with her best gay friend and her new boyfriend. It has been nominated for the American Library Association’s Best Books for Young Adults in 2009 and is on Booklist’s Top 10 Romance Fiction for Youth and was placed on the ALA Round Table Rainbow Books Bibliography.. He is finishing up three (yes three) new novels for young readers. Peter’s full-length play, The Grandma Show, co-authored with Tom Ecobelli, has had productions all over the country. His ten-minute play “Ralph Smith of Schenectady, New York...” has been produced in the 9th Annual New York City 15 Minute Play Festival, the Samuel French 2003 Short Play Festival, and SlamBoston! 2005. Another one-act, “The Good Samaritan,” won first place in SlamBoston! 2006.
Meatless? A Fresh Look at What You Eat
This is the best kind of non-fiction writing, where the author has no agenda and learns along with the reader. I think this book was written for me…I tried out vegetarianism several decades ago for humanitarian reasons, motivated by an…
The Golden Rule
If you can find nothing in the national rhetoric that sounds even faintly like the christian “golden rule,” then this book offers some real inspiration and hope. In the face of this particularly bleak period in American history where the…
The Legendary Miss Lena Horne by Carole Boston Weatherford
Perhaps no singer-of-color, especially one of Lena Horne’s generation, can have a career unaffected by the politics of race. What is revealing to me in this beautifully-illustrated [by Elizabeth Zunon] book is the depth of Horne’s involvement in bringing about…
A Soldier’s Sketchbook: The Illustrated First World War Diary of R.H. Rabjohn by John Wilson
In this era of alternative facts, let’s take a look at credible documentation of a particularly gruesome start to the 20th century called World War I. Historian John Wilson has created a children’s book that makes the cruelty and privations…
I Like, I Don’t Like by Anna Baccelliere, Ale + Ale, Illustrator
There was a skit on Saturday Night Live a while back of whiny critics of the then-newly-released iPhone 5 facing the Chinese “peasant workers” who had manufactured them. The complaints suddenly appeared not only whimsical but downright misanthropic as the…
Want to Know. Whales by Barbara van Rheenen
Want to Know.Whales is a text that seeks to communicate in many different ways. My litmus test for a book is always, Did I learn something important. (The book is aimed at readers 4 years old and up, which includes…
Loving vs. Virginia: A Documentary Novel of the Landmark Civil Rights Case by Patricia Hruby Powell
I can’t think of a time when we have needed a profound book like this more than we do now. Since we are evidently in a period of doomed-to-repeat-history, it’s important that young readers (whose parents are not that much…
A Gefilte Fishy Tale
I thought a book titled A Gefilte Fishy Tale was going to be too lightweight for this blog, but this little book turned out to be a delight (and we are in the midst of a Jewish holiday season, after…
Stickmen’s Guide to The Ocean–Uncovered by Catherine Chambers; illustrated by Venitia Dean and John Paul de Quay
This book is non-fiction, but it’s as fascinating as if the stories were invented. Sea creatures, bizarre flora, and the scariest element of all–humans! The Stickmen are little stick adventurers who have also ventured beneath cities and inside watercraft and…