The most recent Weekly Geeks challenge is to come up with a Top 10 of 2009 list. These have to be books actually published—not just read—in 2009. My choices were limited, as apparently I've only read six books published thus far in 2009. However, I...

While searching for books for our next Literature Circle class, I found this one by Nikki Grimes on the Coretta Scott King Book Awards list. Paris and her brother, Malcolm, have been in one foster home after another for most of their lives. When they...

I have been meaning to read this book by Joanne Harris for, oh, 10 years, and at long last I picked it up at the library. I was prepared to be wowed. I was, instead, woefully underwowed. So the story, for the other dozen people out there who haven't...

In trying to decide which book to read next for the high school World Lit/World Geography class I teach, I picked up Children of the River by Linda Crew. Recommended for grades 7 and up, the book tells the story of Sundara, a Cambodian refugee who fled...

Imagine, book lovers, a world in which all of your books were destroyed. In this novel by Dai Sijie, set during China's Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 70s, two young men—sons of intellectuals— are sent to a remote village in the countryside...