Big A little a: Weekend Reviews (I-II)

A busy Saturday resulted in a delay in the Weekend Reviews roundup. Here it all is in one huge post. (Susan, there are tons of top-ten lists in here. Summarize away!)

Philip Ardagh reviews Larklight, by Philip Reeve, for the Guardian. ("Satisfying, enjoyable and engaging. Mr Reeve has done it again.")

Madeline Bryant recommends holiday choices for the Los Angeles Times. Her choices are:

Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?, written by "fourteen masters of illustration," including Jerry Pinkney and Mo Willems
Follow the Line, by Laura Ljungkvist
Library Lion, by Michelle Knudsen and illustrated by Kevin Hawkes
Escape! The Story of the Great Houdini, by Sid Fleischman
Crispin: At the Edge of the World, by Avi
Fairest, by Gail Carson Levine
The Legend of Bass Reeves, by Gary Paulsen
Pick Me Up, by Jeremy Leslie and David Roberts

Who's In the Loo?, by Jeanne Willis (love the title)
That Rabbit Belongs to Emily Brown, by Cressida Cowell and illustrated by Neal Layton
Library Lion, by Michelle Knudsen and illustrated by Kevin Hawkes
Tim the Tiny Horse, by Harry Hill
Hall includes an anti-recommendation in her picture book roundup: "there's no excuse for the emetic that is Kylie the Showgirl Princess"
The Story of Everything, by Neal Layton
Deadly Invaders, by Denise Grady
Pick Me Up, by Jeremy Leslie and David Roberts
Whitakers World of Facts
Young Gardener, by Stefan and Beverley Buczacki
Look! Seeing the Light in Art, by Gillian Wolfe
Tiger and its perhaps less easily loveable Rhino, by Joanna Skipworth
Larklight, by Philip Reeve
The View from Saturday, by E. L. Konigsburg
Alone on a Wide Wide Sea, by Michael Morpurgo
The Silver Donkey, by Sonya Hartnett
Frozen Fire, by Tim Bowler
Centre of My World, by Andreas Steinhofel

Elizabeth Ward selects her top ten novels for children and top ten picture books for the Washington Post. First with the novels:

The Book of Everything, by Guus Kuijer
Here Lies the Librarian, by Richard Peck
Kiki Strike: Inside the Shadow City, by Kirsten Miller (I adore Kiki Strike. It's one of those books I wish I'd had when I was 10)
Lugalbanda: The Boy Who Got Caught Up in a War: An Epic Tale From Ancient Iraq, by Kathy Henderson
Peter Pan in Scarlet, by Geraldine McCaughrean
Samurai Shortstop, by Alan Gratz
The Unresolved, by T.K. Welsh (I loved this one too.)
Victory, by Susan Cooper
The White Elephant, by Sid Fleischman
Wintersmith, by Terry Pratchett

Flotsam, by David Wiesner
Lost and Found, by Oliver Jeffers
Mommy?, by Maurice Sendak, Arthur Yorinks and Matthew Reinhart
Probuditi!, by Chris van Allsburg
The Runaway Dinner, by Allan Ahlberg, illustrated by Bruce Ingman
Silly Suzy Goose, by Petr Horacek
The Squeaky Door, by Margaret Read MacDonald, illustrated by Mary Newell DePalma
Stanley Goes Fishing, by Craig Frazier
The Three Witches, by Zora Neale Hurston, adapted by Joyce Carol Thomas, illustrated by Faith Ringgold
Wolves, by Emily Gravett

Quest for the Tree Kangaroo, by Sy Montgomery
Diving to a Deep-Sea Volcano, by Kenneth Mallory
John Smith Escapes Again!, by Rosalyn Schanzer
Everybody's Revolution, by Thomas Fleming
The American Story: 100 True Tales From American History, by Jennifer Armstrong, illustrated by Roger Roth
Team Moon: How 400,000 People Landed Apollo 11 on the Moon, by Catherine Thimmesh
Liftoff: A Photobiography of John Glenn, by Don Mitchell
Andy Warhol: Pop Art Painter, by Susan Goldman Rubin
Make It Pop! Activities and Adventures in Pop Art, by Joyce Raimondo.
The Amazing World of Sports, Sports Illustrated

Black? White! Day? Night!, by Laura Vaccaro Seeger ("a smartly conceived, cleverly designed exploration of opposites and their meanings")
The Opposite, by Tom MacRae ("an equally fanciful approach to the same concept")
The Slightly Irregular Fire Engine or The Hithering Thithering Djinn, by Donald Barthelme ("the absurdist story of a young girl named Mathilda who had a brief Alice in Wonderland-type adventure")
365 Penguins, by Jean-Luc Fromental and illustrated by Joelle Jolivet ("definitely pleasing")
New Clothes For New Year's Day, by Hyun-Joo Bae ("delightful illustrations")

Snow Globe Family, by Jane O'Connor, illustrated by S.D. Schindler ("Delightfully working out parallels in winter outings and the real fun of a good night's sleep after a cold day of play, whether the snow is real or not.")
Ophelia, by Lisa Klein ("Shakespeare loved changing source material around, and Klein continues in his footsteps")
Beka Cooper: Book 1: Terrier, by Tamora Pierce (has a "strikingly unexpected ending")
Beauty and the Beast, by Max Eilenberg, illustrated by Angela Barrett
Night Boat to Freedom, by Margot Theis Raven, pictures by E.B.Lewis ("Color--that first red, her quilts, the dark and the dawn--flows through the story, and the hues of E.B. Lewis' illustrations move us.")
365 Penguins, by Jean-Luc Fromental, illustratedby Joelle Jolivet (" it's the fun of the rapidly multiplying penguin horde that carries the book")

Sue Corbett chooses her top books of 2006 for the Miami Herald. With the help of an "in-home focus group," Corbett's choices are the following:

Happy Birthday, Jamela!, by Niki Daly
I'm Not a Baby!, by Jill McElmurry
Lilly's Big Day, by Kevin Henkes
John, Paul, George & Ben, by Lane Smith
Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom, by Carole Boston Weatherford, illustrated by Kadir Nelson
Tales Our Abuelitas Told: A Hispanic Folktale Collection, by Alma Flor Ada and Isabel Campoy
Clementine, by Sarah Pennypacker
Half Moon Investigations, by Eoin Colfer
A True and Faithful Narrative, by Katherine Sturtevant
Born to Rock, by Gordon Korman
Headlock, by Joyce Sweeney