So, if you’re a YA reader, you’ve probably come across some of Sarah Rees Brennan’s stuff before – The Demon’s Lexicon, The Lyburn Legacy, The Bane Chronicles. I have only read book one of The Demon’s Lexicon series, and – to be honest – I forgot that I had read it until I went on Goodreads to post this book’s review and mark everything of hers as TBR. In my review of that book I mentioned that the author had created interesting characters, even if […]
A few recent disappointments
Let me just start off by saying that I thought, even though I saw it was only Part 1 of the story, that Tough Justice: Exposed was going to be a complete novella, and in actuality, it really only read like a 80 or so page prologue. It was an introduction to the characters and conflicts, but very little else, and it suffered for it. More than once I made a note to myself that the author was either rushing things or telling us things instead […]
Author/Illustrators are kind of cheating, taking all that talent up, don’t you think?
NetGalley introduced me to the work of Ashley Spires this week, and, if you haven’t read any of her picture books, you’re going to be thanking them as much as I am. Spires is both author and illustrator of The Most Magnificent Thing and Over-Scheduled Andrew, as well as many other books. The illustrations are simple – mostly penciled backgrounds, with the colorful characters and all the action in the foreground – but also really expressive. The young inventor in The Most Magnificent Thing, for […]
Reach for the stars; there goes Jupiter, here comes Mars.
When I was in Kindergarten, we weren’t all that worried about physical fitness. I do remember we used to sing the song this review’s title comes from (originally from Romper Room, which I doubt very many of you remember, but here’s an Australian version, in case you need an earworm), but that was as far as actual exercise went in our classroom. Fast forward a dozen years or so, to about a decade ago, and now I’m teaching preschool in Cambridge Mass, basically in Harvard’s […]