VOYA (Voice of Youth Advocates) has a great list of the Top Shelf Fiction for Middle School Readers from 2005.  The list is in pdf format, so make sure you have Adobe loaded. 

A lot of my favorite teen novels of the year are included, like Revenge of the Witch by Joseph Delaney, Invisible by Pete Hautman, and Uglies by Scott Westerfeld.  Many of the others are on my lengthy to-be-read list and others will be added there.  Enjoy!

The Ontario Library Association named Three Wishes by Deborah Ellis as a nominee for the Silver Birch Awards, an award where children in the province vote for their favorites from the 20 Canadian books nominated.  But the Canadian Jewish Congress does not agree about the merit of the book, saying that it reflects anti-Semitic views and is inappropriate for the 9 to 11 year old target age. 

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Duck and Goose by Tad Hills. 

This is one of my favorite picture books in a long, long time.  It has been added to the rather short of list of “I will use this in story times for the next decade” books.  It is the story of a small duck and a small goose who discover a strange polka-dot egg sitting in the grass.  The two of them argue together about whose egg it is.  Duck saw it first, but Goose touched it first.  They eventually agree to sit on it together to keep it warm.  It isn’t until a little blue bird comes along and tells them it is a ball that the Duck and Goose are let in on the joke.  Children on the other hand will have figured it out from the beginning.

The art of the book is perfect for children.  Humorous, silly, and clever.  And it  matches the text, because the words are also silly and clever and just right for children. 

If you are looking for a great Easter basket stuffer, this book would be it, though it isn’t an Easter book.  Use it in any spring storytime, but it is good enough to bring out in the fall too when the geese are flying south overhead.  I know it is one that I will turn to time and time again for story time.  I just have to come up with more themes to suit it.  🙂

Chicken and Cat by Sara Varon.

This nearly wordless book about a cat who lives in the country and comes to visit his friend Chicken in the city, shows how country folk may react to the city.  At first, Cat only sees the garbage, the concrete, and the empty lots.  Chicken shows him much more like a huge park, but Cat still thinks that there aren’t enough flowers and colors in the city.  The final solution is that the two friends create a garden out of the empty lot across the street from Chicken’s house. 

I really liked this story.  The wordlessness makes it accessible to preschool children all on their own.  As a librarian in a rural community, it is also a really nice book to help introduce children to a city and to share before they travel to a large city for the first time.  This is a great addition to collections in both city and rural libraries. 

The Edge of the Forest is a new online children’s literature magazine filled with articles from some of the top children’s literature bloggers.  They have book reviews, a collection of the best of the blogs, and a great section called Kid Picks where they ask children’s for book recommendations.  Wonderful job! 

The Marvelous Misadventures of Fun-Boy by Ralph Cosentino is a book perfect for boys who are emergent readers.  It is a nearly wordless book where the pictures tell the story in comic-book style.  The modern feeling art is a perfect match to the series of silly episodes that any little boy can relate to.  This one will have your new reader giggling along to jokes at exactly their level.  He will be able to “read” the book to himself in the very next sitting, and will want to because he will want to laugh at the jokes all over again. 

MTV to target lucrative teen publishing market is not the big news that some seem to think it is. Money-making and teenagers has always seemed to be in the front of MTV’s business plans. But wait, perhaps I am being too cynical. Let’s see what their four books for teen girls are going to be about: “coming-of-age themes, glamour and hot boys.” Just what the teen publishing world is missing. Not.

I Spy Little Bunnies by Jean Marzollo, illustrated by Walter Wick.

This is a charming board book version of the popular I Spy series.  The puzzles have been made easier by simplifying the graphical elements.  The rhymes by Marzollo have also been made simpler.  Photographs have been mixed in with the text so they are rebus-like, perfect for emergent readers to begin to understand how reading works.  The puzzle and game aspect of the book may draw in more reluctant beginning readers who will not realize they are learning about reading while they play.