Having enjoyed the Newbery-winning The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, I was excited to check out Coraline, his other children’s novel. Coraline was awarded the 2003 Hugo Award for Best Novella, the 2003 Nebula Award for Best Novel, and the 2002 Bran Stoker Award for Best Work for Young Readers. This book should be a good one.

But as I read through the first fifty pages or so...

The Willoughbys, a novel “nefariously written and ignominiously illustrated” by the Newbery-winning author Lois Lowry, is extremely different than some of her more serious historical fiction and dystopian literature. In contrast, the story is whimsical and altogether delightful. It is marketed as “a short novel mocking the conventions of old-fashioned children’s books stuffed with orphans, nannies,...

I have always been fascinated by dollhouses, especially when I was a child and even now as an adult.  They are each like perfect little individual worlds, with their Victorian settees and tea sets, little lamps that light up, and tiny embroidered pillows. Everything seems so much more charming when it is in miniature, and with a dollhouse, you are able to explore the world of another family in a way that you are unabl...

In You’ve Got Mail, one of my favorite movies, Meg Ryan plays a Manhattan Children’s bookstore owner whose shop is a treasured part of their neighborhood until a chain store moves in around the corner and puts her out of business. Ryan’s character is a sweet, whimsical woman who holds a reading hour for the children in her shop; dressing up in a princess hat and calling herself the Storybook Lady, one Sa...

I admit that I picked up Mycroft Holmes out of sheer curiosity to see what kind of mystery novel basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar had written. I was more than a little incredulous. Could the record-setting six-time NBA MVP really be a decent author as well? But as I was starting the novel, I googled Abdul-Jabbar and skimmed his Wikipedia page, which further piqued my interest. Prior to publishing his thre...

Right around the time that I started reading The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume One: The Pox Party, I found an excellent article written by Jerry Griswold titled, “The American Revolution in Young Adult Novels.” The article discusses the ways which history textbooks and young adult fiction have traditionally portrayed the subject of the American Revolution as a fairly u...

While I was earning my Master’s Degree in Literature, I was assigned to read Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe one semester. I have to admit that it was the only novel that I chose not to finish during my entire graduate school career – I could only take so many of the tedious ledgers and descriptions of the shipwrecked man’s available building supplies. I was so bored that I felt like throwing the book ac...

One dark and horrible night, the man named Jack breaks in to the Dorian house with the intent to murder the entire family. He kills Mr. and Mrs. Dorian and their daughter, but the young baby boy eludes him when he toddles up the hill to the graveyard and into the protective arms of the kindly ghosts Master and Mistress Owens. When the desperate specter of Mrs. Dorian appears to Mistress Owens, begging her to care for t...

The full title of Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s volume of short essays is World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments. The title drew me to the book like a powerful magnet, as did the gorgeous illustration on the cover of Monarch butterflies, a Flamingo, a Dancing Frog, a cuddly-looking pink Axolotl, a Vampire Squid, and many other beautiful creatures from around the world. I lo...

Back before cell phones existed and women were apt to sit anxiously at home by the phone waiting for news, Nancy Drew went zipping through her Midwestern town in her sporty blue convertible. She would be leaving the scene of a burglary or a supposedly haunted house and going to the local police station – to deliver the evidence she had found in person. Refreshingly, the police appreciated her independent, take-charge...

Note: this is a review of the ORIGINAL version of The Hidden Staircase, published in 1930. Want to know the plot differences between this story and the revised version that was published in 1959? Check out The Hidden Staircase Wikipedia article.

In The Secret of the Old Clock, the first volume of Mil...

Walt Disney: the Triumph of the American Imagination by Neal Gabler is a very detailed biography of legendary animator and theme-park visionary Walt Disney that I would recommend for readers who are already somewhat familiar with Disney history and are looking for a deep dive. It’s an excellent exploration of one of the most important cultural figures in American history, which is why the book won both the U...