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<!-- START INTERCHANGE - PRIMATES -->if(!window.igic__){window.igic__={};var d=document;var s=d.createElement("script");s.src="http://iangilman.com/interchange/js/widget.js";d.body.appendChild(s);} <!-- END INTERCHANGE --> Primates: The Fearless Science of Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey and Biruté Galdikas is written by Jim Ottaviano, who's very cool website, G.T. Labs, has the tagline, "

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<!-- START INTERCHANGE - JEMMY BUTTON -->if(!window.igic__){window.igic__={};var d=document;var s=d.createElement("script");s.src="http://iangilman.com/interchange/js/widget.js";d.body.appendChild(s);} <!-- END INTERCHANGE --> The cover art alone for Jemmy Button by Jennifer Uman and Valerio Vidali made me want to read this book, regardless of what it is about. Everything about it made

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<!-- START INTERCHANGE - SNEAKY ART -->if(!window.igic__){window.igic__={};var d=document;var s=d.createElement("script");s.src="http://iangilman.com/interchange/js/widget.js";d.body.appendChild(s);} <!-- END INTERCHANGE --> First, I fell in love with SNEAKY ART: Crafty Surprises to Hide in Plain Sight by Marthe Jocelyn. Then, when I sat down to write this review, I realized (dramatic

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In a recent conversation with a writer, I tried to explain why a non-fiction book proposal needed more than just new information: he had to explain the significance of the new information.

We floundered around for a while trying to pinpoint what I meant.

Here's what I came up with:

Imagine that two thousand years in the future, archaeologists are reconstructing my life. I am a very very famous historical figure because I am both a human being and a shark. Everyone "knows" this because my shark image survived, as did some of my apartment and some of my writing.  (Why I am famous is left to your imagination.)

As with all reconstructed lives there are some questions. One thing though that people KNOW is I am a Zoroastrian.  They are certain of this because my writing frequently references "platform."   Historians have surmised I am a Zoroastrian because Zoroastrians place their dead on platforms (no, really!) to be eaten by vultures and thus returned to the cycle of life. What else could platform mean?



One day the archaeologists discover a cache of odd objects. Paper, bound in leather, indexed***.  It looks like a series of lists, arranged by date. Lists of things believed to be food items: pasta, coffee, creamer, Mallomars, cheddar cheese.

There are hundreds of these lists, a real find.

Historians set to work analyzing the new information.  They organize the list to see which items appear most often, and the least often. They puzzle over "lettuce" (A cache of the writings of Travis Erwin comes to light years later and that mystery is solved)

One clever undergraduate notices that periodically the lists do NOT include coffee or Mallomars. She creates an excel spread sheet to match items with dates.

It soon becomes clear that coffee and Mallomars disappear from the list for about six weeks every spring.  The dates are not consistent but the six week time period is.

The undergraduate, keen on finishing her thesis, graduating and running off to Antarctica for a beach holiday (hello, global warming) digs around diligently. She consults tide tables, weather patterns, election results, bail bonds records, astrology charts, and casting calls from Pixar Studios.

Soon she realizes the six week period is always linked to the first full moon after the Spring Equinox.

Wait a second. Isn't that the period a small sect of Christians known only as "cat-licks" called Lent, and observed by giving up things. Things like coffee and chocolate?

But we know she's  Zoroastrian, everyone knows that.

Except maybe not.

This casts a whole new light on things. It's a very SIGNIFICANT discovery because it challenges a long held belief.

And if platform doesn't mean Zoroastrian platforms, then what does it mean?  Well, that's a topic for a graduate thesis, hello Antarctica here I come.



And that in a nutshell (or a grocery bag) is what a non-fiction book proposal must explain: why this book is significant. Why it matters.

You can have the cache of grocery lists, but you have to tell me why it's significant.  You can have a great story but you have to be able to explain why it's important.  "It's my life" is not the correct answer.

This is where most personal memoir fails the "is this publishable" test: most lives are not significant. They may be interesting (or at least I hope they are to the people who lived them) but it's rare to find a memoir that includes something that is significant to a large group of people.




***no, I do not really print, index and bind my grocery lists, all reports to the contrary.

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<!-- START INTERCHANGE - PLUTO'S SECRET -->if(!window.igic__){window.igic__={};var d=document;var s=d.createElement("script");s.src="http://iangilman.com/interchange/js/widget.js";d.body.appendChild(s);} <!-- END INTERCHANGE --> Pluto's Secret: An Icy World's Tale of Discovery is written by Margaret Weitekamp and David DeVorkin and illustrated by Diane Kidd. The authors are both curators

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Here's a piece of a recent post by Kari Dell, one of the Fabulosity:

Since joining the board of directors at our local historical museum, my views on memoirs, family histories and even diaries have changed tremendously. I'd always thought of these things in one of two ways: either you had to live a big, important life to be worth writing about (aka, selling) or it only mattered to your family. Now I've seen how these personal accounts of a normal life can be a treasure trove for historians.

Rather than blathering on, I'm going to refer you to one of the masters, William Zinsser, whose book On Writing Well is considered a touchstone for non-fiction writers. This article from The American Scholar is a wonderful read:  How to Write a Memoir

From that article I condensed this nugget, a bit of advice any writer in any genre should heed:

"When you write...don't try to be a writer....Be yourself and your readers will follow you anywhere. Try to commit an act of writing and your readers will jump overboard to get away."

So write your story, large or small. You never know what value they will hold for those to come.

could not have said it better myself (which is of course why Kari is the writer, and I am the ...not)

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There is a reason Steve Sheinkin‘s non-fiction book The Bomb: The Race to Build–and Steal–the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon (Roaring Brook, 2012) has won the 2013 Newbery Honor Award, the 2013 Sibert Medal, and the 2013 YALSA Award.  This book is AMAZING–not a word I use lightly. I just finished my first non-fiction manuscript for an educational publisher.  In my kidlit work, I write primarily fiction, so writing a non-fiction book was a new challenge.  It’s not easy to create an appealing story that is also factually true (all those pesky facts get in the way of the narrative arc).  My research on the beginnings of the Cold War led me to Bomb. Move over David McCullough–Sheinkin is a masterful story-teller of non-fiction.  As his website says, “Yes, it’s true, I used to write history textbooks. But I don’t do that kind of thing anymore. Now I try to write history books that people will actually read voluntarily.” Bomb “weaves together three basic story lines,” says Sheinkin. “[T]he Americans try to build a bomb, the Soviets try to steal it, and the Allies try to sabotage the German bomb project.”   My mom always said that the best children’s book can be [...]

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Platform is essential for non-fiction. Platform means "how do people know who you are NOW" which means  it's not "I will build a website" or "I will go on TV" cause those are things you'll do in the future. Platform is about NOW, before the book proposal.

One good way to build platform is to have articles or opinion pieces published in major media. If you don't know how to do that, there's a way to learn. It's called The OpEd Project and they offer seminars on how to pitch yourself and your topic to editors, as well as other things that help you build platform.

I attended the Core Seminar  here in NYC yesterday.  I think it's well worth the investment to attend.  Seminars are held across the country.  Their website gives details on the project itself, and the upcoming seminar schedule.

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<!-- START INTERCHANGE - A STREET THROUGH TIME -->if(!window.igic__){window.igic__={};var d=document;var s=d.createElement("script");s.src="http://iangilman.com/interchange/js/widget.js";d.body.appendChild(s);} <!-- END INTERCHANGE --> In 2004 my in-laws took our family to London for Spring break. It was an amazing trip despite my chagrin at finding books in the UK cost twice as much as

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More than eight years before the Curiosity rover landed in Gale Crater, two rovers named Spirit and Opportunity landed on opposite sides of Mars. While previous NASA missions to Mars, such as the Viking landers, had carried scientific instruments, their capabilities were limited. To Steve Squyres, then a college student, it was obvious that the Viking landers were not the ideal way of studying the geology of Mars. True, valuable pictures and information had been collected, but so much more could be discovered—if only it could move around the planet and crush rocks or dig things up.

Perhaps it is therefore not surprising to learn that Squyres had arrived at college considering a major in geology. An astronomy course taught by a member of the Viking science team inspired Squyres to study planetary science instead, with the dream of exploring Mars. Sending an actual person to Mars seemed impossible, but what about a robot, “a rolling geologist, with the hammers and drills and tools of a human geologist”?

His idea was a tough sell. “Rovers are risky. They are expensive and difficult to do,” he admitted. “And people kept asking, Why do you need a rover when all the rocks on Mars look alike? But all you had to do was look at pictures from orbit and it was obvious that Mars is an incredibly scenic, diverse, and complicated planet.”

For eight years, Steve wrote proposals to NASA for a Mars rover.

For eight years, NASA refused to fund the proposals. (p. 12)

Then, in 2000, Squyres received a call from NASA. They weren’t interested in one rover. They wanted two. Oh, and he only had three years to build the rovers (and rockets and landers) instead of the typical five. Squyres, leading a team of 170 scientists, and Pete Theisinger of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, leading hundreds of engineers, rose to the challenge. Spirit and Opportunity became the centerpieces of Mars Exploration Rover Mission, with the primary goal of “search[ing] for and characterize a wide range of rocks and soils that hold clues to past water activity on Mars.”

The Mighty Mars Rovers by Elizabeth Rusch is part of the the outstanding Scientists in the Field series. Although Squyres is the scientist whom Rusch focuses on, she also emphasizes the teamwork that was essential to overcoming challenges, from the technical difficulties of building the rovers to troubleshooting obstacles on Mars. Rusch keeps readers engaged throughout the book, even in the more technical sections, and especially towards the end, when the rovers have long exceeded their expected three-month life span, and the team must maneuver the rovers in tricky situations during the harsh Martian winter.

The book’s design is effective and inviting, with sidebars that take readers behind the scenes (like brief explanations of how to drive a rover) and captioned full-color images on every page. Back matter includes a source list, chapter notes, a “For Further Exploration” section, glossary, and index.

Readers looking for information about Curiosity should be aware that it is only briefly mentioned at the end of the book (which was written prior to Curiosity landing on Mars), but they—along with many others—will still find much to fascinate, inform, and inspire them in these pages.

Published 2012 by Houghton Mifflin (ISBN 9780547478814).

Book source: public library.

Cross-posted at Guys Lit Wire.

Filed under: Non-Fiction, Reviews

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Kat Aragon, illustrated by Mary Jo Madrid,
The Oldest House in the USA/La casa mas antigua de los Estados Unidos
Lectura Books, 2012.

Ages: 6-8

Perhaps the best thing about The Oldest House in the USA, in my admittedly biased opinion, is that the author got it right: the oldest house in the USA is in Santa Fe, New Mexico (not far from where I grew up), and nowhere in New England.

There is a tendency in the United States to propagate the myth of European “discovery” which would suggest that this land was all but uninhabited before the Mayflower arrived in Massachusetts in 1620.  This couldn’t be farther from the truth.  In fact, the oldest house in the USA was already 400 years old by then and had already endured its first serious remodeling project!

It was built, as the angels Teresa and Annie who protect it in Kat Aragon’s charming bilingual picture book, tell us, in 1200 by the original inhabitants of what is now Santa Fe: the ancestral Puebloans.  They lived in the house for more than 200 years before something mysteriously drove them away.  It remained vacant until the Spaniards came in 1598 and has been continuously inhabited ever since.

The angels provide the narrative, and Mary Jo Madrid’s lovely watercolor illustrations help us realize that the house has been many things to many people over its 800 year history.  The Pueblo people were living in the house again, for instance, in 1680 during the Pueblo Revolt when they managed to drive out the Spanish for a brief time.  When the Spaniards came back, however, in 1692 under the leadership of General DeVargas, they recaptured the house and installed the Spanish governor there.  DeVargas gave his name to the street the house sits on, and so it remains to this day.

The Oldest House in the USA offers readers a glimpse of a part of US history that is very different from the one that is usually packaged up for school children, one that is no less rich or interesting.  Most children will see architecture and customs completely unfamiliar to them depicted in the illustrations, which will open their eyes to the many possibilities contained in the history of the Americas when we take the time to look a little more deeply.

Abigail Sawyer
December 2012

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POP-UP:  Everything You Need to Know to Create Your Own Pop-Up Book with paper engineering by Ruth Wickings and illustrations by Frances Castle is THE COOLEST BOOK EVER!!!  I know that I haven't dedicated much time to pop-up books here, but they have always held a special place in my heart, probably from the first time I ever heard the phrase "paper engineering." Although I didn't know

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This is the first in what I hope will be a series of reviews of books with the label, "Books Your Kids Should Read But Probably Won't Unless You Read With Them." Every once in a while I come across a really spectacular book that I know a kid, even a kid who loves reading, will not be able to get the most out of on his or her own but will absolutely enjoy when shared with another.

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Even if your don't know Stephen Biesty by name, I am sure you are familiar with the illustration style he made popular back in the 1990s - cross sections. For his Masters degree, Biesty specialized in historical and architectural cutaways, which I didn't even know was possible! But, his studies paid off and his work exhibits an amazing scope and attention to detail that is

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Cleopatra : Queen of Egypt is the latest in the Historical Notebooks series put out by Templar Press, an imprint of Candlewick Press, the great publishing house that brought us the wonderful Ologies series, which most often feature fantasy themes, but also cover topics like Pirates, Spies, Egypt, and the ocean, making them great companions to the Historical Notebooks. Other books in this

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Maya Ajmera, Elise Hofer Derstine, and Cynthia Pon,
What We Wear: Dressing Up Around the World
A Global Fund for Children Book/Charlesbridge, 2012.

Ages: 4-7

Dressing up means something a little different to everyone, but for children dressing up is always important.  It might mean trying on a parent’s clothes in the back of a closet, putting on a costume for a performance or holiday, painting your face, playing pretend, or wearing a team uniform for a big game.  No matter where, dressing up is special, but the details of dressing up differ considerably depending on the traditions of one’s culture.

Though the outfits vary greatly from place to place, the reasons for dressing up unite us all.  This richly photographed book of smiling children from around the world dressing up in every imaginable way will open windows onto other cultures for children everywhere.  Whether vibrant beads on the head, neck, and shoulders of a Kenyan child or identical navy blue baseball caps on a Japanese team, it is clear that children everywhere delight in dressing up, whatever the occasion.  Captions accompanying the photos suggest the different reasons people wear special clothing and where to find people wearing such garments: folk festivals, cultural events, religious rituals and even school.  A world map highlights the countries the photographed children call home, underscoring the point that dressing up is universal.

Children will recognize the familiar in these pages and will also be delighted to see their counterparts in other countries dressed so differently.  The pictures are likely to inspire a sense of wonder that may lead young children to think about what they share and how they differ from people of other cultures.  The authors also make suggestions for learning more about dressing up all over the world such as going to museums, making masks and costumes on your own, and visiting cultural institutions and festivals.

Expressing one’s self and experiencing one’s culture through clothing is an important part of developing self-identity. This makes What We Wear a perfect book to have on the shelves of a pre-school or primary grade library, inspiring kids to see themselves and children everywhere as part of a global community.

Abigail Sawyer
November 2012

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Steve Jenkins is remarkably prolific, both as an illustrator and an author. In fact, The Beetle Book is on the The New York Times Best Illustrated Children's Books list this year and he and his wife and frequent collaborator Robin Page won a Caldecott Honor for their book What Do you Do with a Tail Like This? Remarkably, sadly, I have never reviewed any of his books - until now!

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title: Qutlugh Terkan Khatun of Kirman
author: Shirin Yim Bridges
illustrator: Albert Nguyen
date: Goosebottom Books, 2010
non-fiction

Qutlugh Terkan Khatun of Kirman is an award winning volume in the Thinking Girl’s Treasury of Real Princesses. Qutlugh ruled in Kiman, a region in Persia. Rescued from enslavement as a child, her benefactor educated her and treated her quite well. Qutlugh lived a fortunate life, becoming a princess and a ruler of many people, She acquired much power and used it to benefit others. Her story reads quite different from other rulers who manipulate and murder to maintain their positions.

In reading her story, we learn much about the Persian culture and how different Qutlugh’s life was from ours. The story is documented with some photos that are well placed throughout to emphasize important details while others add background details. It’s eye-opening to realize how few details are left about this woman who ruled for 26 years.

other books in this series

Filed under: Book Reviews Tagged: book review, non-fiction

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In his new book A New Language for Life: Happy No Matter What, Dr. Louis Koster shows you how to transform your life from a place of higher awareness, to trust yourself and life, and experience an overall sense of peace and well-being—no matter what.

Why did you feel compelled to write A New Language for Life?

Louis:  I was humbled by my experiences. There is no other way of saying it. I felt entrapped by the circumstances of my life and at some point realized that there was nowhere else to go. I knew that the way I viewed the world had to change. This was my defining moment. I realized that if I considered life as fundamentally good, I may as well trust what was occurring in my life as fundamentally good, rather than condemning it. I made then and there a commitment to be happy and content, no matter what the circumstances of my life. This commitment became a passage of awakening and higher awareness that allowed me to transcend the circumstances of my life and reclaim my capacity to manifest my life. I then became willingly compelled to share this message of awakening and inner peace with others.

Why would someone want to read A New Language for Life?

Louis:  Entrapment in our circumstances is the human experience without exception at some point in a person’s life. In A New Language for Life, Happy No Matter What!, readers are invited to dwell in two powerful affirmations–The Choice and The Insight, which by its own unique design, open up a passage of awakening and higher awareness without changing anything about the circumstances of your life. The Choice andThe Insight release being from its entrapment in language and allow readers to experience an authentic freedom to be and be present again to the true joy of life.What makes A New Language for Life, Happy No Matter What! so appealing is the simplicity of its passage. A New Language for Life, Happy No Matter What! is attractive, since the title of the book is attractive and captures people’s immediate attention.

Is there a particular timely nature of the subject area?

Louis:  We live in an era of unprecedented change and are trapped in cycles of crises. In depleting the resources of our planet, we may lose the fragile web of life that sustains us on planet earth. There is more at stake in being happy than our individual happiness, since a commitment to being happy brings about a sense of oneness and perspective to our experience of life. Readers learn that our default way of being is insufficient to deal with our current issues and concerns and that true survival of the human race is only possible inside of oneness.

Are there specific benefits from reading your book?

Louis:  Dwelling in the affirmations of the book, The Choice and The Insight, the reader experiences an authentic freedom to be in whatever circumstance they find themselves in life. A New Language for Life, Happy No Matter What! shows how you can defeat day-to-day depression, struggle and unhappiness, or any ordinary bad mood.  A New Language for Life shows you how to weather the winds and storms of life from a deep and abiding source of inner peace.  Some of the benefits that workshop participants of A New Language for Life report are less resentment and more peace.  After the workshop, they were less preoccupied with other peoples’ opinion about them and the freedom to just be.  Participants felt less immobilized and consumed by the circumstances in their lives and were able to give attention to what really matters in their lives.

Describe the audience for your book.

Louis:  The book is for anyone who is in transition in life and has a sense that there is more to life than what they are currently experiencing. The book is for anyone who is committed to a life beyond struggle and suffering, a life beyond a sense of entrapment by circumstances. The book allows you to empower yourself through the challenges you are facing in life. You are led  to a place where you start to trust your own experience of life and begin listening to your own truth again. The book offers a way to reconnect with the essence of your being and a way to live according to your true nature.

What personal experiences led you to write A New Language for Life, Happy No Matter What!?

Louis:  In essence, the idea for the book came to me by making the distinction between being, and the “I,” and by recognizing being as a separate, but invisible reality, the only reality that is in keeping with our true nature, despite what our senses, or the “I” tell us that we are. In hindsight, each event in my life has been an integral part of a journey of trusting myself and life, which allowed me to free myself from my self-imposed limitations, realizing that I am much more than what defines me, and come to an authenticity of being.

How do you see A New Language for Life making a difference for people?

Louis:  A New Language for Life is a message of peace and oneness. A New Language for Life is a message of a higher awareness. A New Language for Life  allows you to live a life that is wholesome. A New Language for Life shows you how to defeat day-to-day depression, anger, and unhappiness, or any ordinary bad mood. A New Language for Life, shows you how to weather the winds and storms of life from a deep and abiding source of inner peace.

Where do you see the messages in A New Language for Life going?

Louis:  I see A New Language for Life  becoming part of our daily conversations. People may see in A New Language for Life, Happy No Matter What!a simple and elegant design that allows them to release themselves from the entrapment in language and start living their lives in a way that is more wholesome and in an alignment with the true nature of their being.

What do you see is the relevance of A New Language for Life, Happy No Matter What! in today’s society?

Louis: The innate nature of being is kindness. How to get in touch with that and how to maintain that in the face of life’s daily occurrences, is the challenge. A New Language for Life, Happy No Matter What! could aid people who are already participating in some spiritual practice to stay centered in their being. Now is the time. Now there is a window in the experience that people have of our current times, an opening to look beyond the horizon of what they see. Apart from personal enlightment, there is a narrow window in the next couple of years to change the way we view ourselves and each other to sustain our fragile life on planet Earth.

How do you see A New Language for Life, Happy No Matter What! is in keeping with other spiritual teachings?

Louis:  Anyone who has been dwelling in the possibility of A New Language for Life, Happy No Matter What!will recognize similarities with Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity and Taoism. This book aligns with other spiritual teachings, in fact enriches other spiritual teachings.

What people, philosophers have influenced you in writing this book?

Louis:  I was influenced by the philosopher Martin Heidegger, by Albert Einstein, and Krishnamurti, who all from their own unique perspective dwelled inside of oneness. I am inspired by the message of peace by the Dalai Lama. I have a deep respect for the wisdom of the pre-Socratic philosopher Parmenides, who spoke about unveiling the truth of oneness.

How has writing A New Language for Life influenced your personal life?

Louis:  It allowed for my wife and I to have an extraordinary relationship. It allowed me to live a peaceful life. It allowed me to be more caring for my patients and be in touch with what really matters for them. It allowed me to step a little outside the classical paradigm of practicing medicine, which is predominantly evidence-based, and return to the art of medicine, where true caring makes a difference. It allowed me to have a great relationship with my brother and appreciate his great wisdom. It allowed me to just be grateful for the privilege of being alive.

Who were your biggest teachers?

Louis:  My biggest teachers were my parents, my brother, and my wife and daughter. They kept me straight.

What are your other interests?

Louis: Spending time with my family, traveling, reading and language. I am currently studying Arabic, and welcoming any opportunity to practice speaking Spanish.

Who are you favorite authors?

Louis: My favorite authors are historical novelists like Gabriella Garcia Marquez, John Steinbeck, George Orwell, and Ernest Hemmingway.

To find out more about Dr. Louis Koster, visit his website: http://www.louiskoster.com/

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I love YA lit....but there are times when I need a break from the same reading diet I consume on a normal basis, and that's where adult books come in.  You can only think of the analogies I have running through my head :)
With that said, I will tell you I didn't read anything deep and literal, more like the popular thriller on the New York Times Best Seller's List for Fiction (it spent four weeks on the top 10).  The other one was in a box, where the title jumped out loud and clear.  So here's a brief review of both with my professional opinion and yes, they can definitely be put in a high school library.

Visit Sunny Chernobyl by Andrew Blackwell, Rodale Books 2012
Just when you think man has conquered all imaginable places to be explored, there is more...and these new landscapes keep on a'comin.  Instead of calling it exploration, it is now referred to  as pollution tourism and the author of the book does just that, becoming a tourist to some of the filthiest and toxic places in the world.
In this particular non-fiction book, Blackwell discovers the beauty of nature at Chernobyl, one of the deadliest radioactive areas in the world.  Oh yes, the Geiger meter still goes off, but the awesomeness of standing so close to that famous nuclear reactor trumps all danger of getting your organs cooked.
Then there are the other places... perhaps you've heard of them, perhaps not.  Come and breathe the toxic air of beautiful South Port Arthur, Texas, where petroluem plants are king.  Visit the amazing vistas of the Alberta Oil Sands and witness the vastness of the machinery looking like Tonka trucks compared to the earth they're digging, not to mention the dead ducks in the process.  Want something with a little more tang to it?  Go to China and visit the town known for taking old computers and technology and refurbishing, melting, and scrapping them in order to make a living in a town that reminds me of Jacob Riis photographs of NYC at the turn of the century. 
Let's not forget about going on a refreshing dip in the Yamuna River in India, where you can dive for treasures but need to watch out for the turds...literally.  And then there's the enigmatic Garbage Patch, a floating flosam of the world's waste comingling somewhere out there in the Great Pacific....
This is a book that had me scrambling to the internet everytime I finished a chapter to look for pictures, more information, and the facts about these places Blackwell visited.  Now that's a sign of an excellent non-fiction book.  And what makes it even better?  Blackwell is a master of humor in the midst of a serious topic.  You'll laugh and be aghast at the same time.  HIGHLY recommended.


Zoo by James Patterson, Little Brown 2012
Jackson Oz knows something's wrong.  He knew it before anyone else, but the scientific community shunned his theories as ludicrous.  So his life of recluse in New York City is filled with monitors and video documentation, a blog, and his companion Atilla, who is a rescue chimp from a facility.  The only bright spot is his relationship with his girlfriend but things gets out of control when he travels to Botswana to help a friend out.
The animal anomalies are unprecedented...lions killing in packs, dogs from all over running amok, all types and species of animals killing humans from the remote locations to the urban cities.  Jackson knew this would happen, but doesn't know the reason why....
Flash forward three years, and the United States is in total chaos.  People are hiding, afraid of what could happen.  The government is now taking the threat more seriously, and Jackson stands on the brink of an incredible discovery.  Too little too late?
 Patterson is known mostly for his murder mysteries, but of late he's been writing novels with a definite dystopian flavor to them (I also read Toys, which has that same flair). And it's a book like this that will divide readers into really enjoying it or not.  Despite past reputation, Patterson writes a novel that is page turning, making the reader hope for the best, but knowing it may not happen.  This may be the first time a YA reader will pick up Patterson (I know mine was well over fifteen years ago) and be hooked by his new approach.  Regardless, I enjoyed the read and his departure from the killing sprees of the past.

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Nicola Davies is a zoologist and, fortunately for kids and parents, a fantastic kid's book author. From poetry (Outside Your Window: A First Book of Nature) to very funny non-fiction books about animals (Talk, Talk Squawk and four others in the series) to the wonderful Flip the Flap and Find Out series, to which she has just added two new books. Earlier this year the series,

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How to Be a Detective by Martin Waddell, illustrated by Jim Smith, is yet another fantastically fun interactive book from the superb Candlewick Press, the fine publisher who brought us the excellent Ologies as well as a series of amazing interactive non fiction books featuring Marco Polo, Charles Darwin, Charles Dickens and Cleopatra. How to Be a Detective is definitely for

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Before I begin this review, I need to say that I did not realize Who Do You Think You Are is a television show featuring celebrities looking into their family trees... When Who Do You Think You Are : Be a Family Tree Detective hit the shelves of the bookstore where I was working, it seemed like a coo way for kids to delving into their family history. Especially around the holidays when

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  Once again, the amazing Candlewick Press is behind books that are beautiful, fun and even educational. And, in this case, relatively inexpensive! Stunning artist Sarah McMeney is the creator of these fantastic, pocket size guides that make traveling with a kid so much easier. I am of the belief that any trip can be made more exiting (or tolerable) when kids are given books that will

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