Weekend Reviews (I-II)

First things first: If I owe you an e-mail (about The Edge of the Forest; about a writing group; about books), I'll get in touch over the course of this week. It's been a very busy week, and I have a few more busy days before I get caught up. I'm sorry for any and all delays. Please forgive me. This semester has caught up with me.

Here are this weekend's reviews of children and YA books:

Kathy Englehart reviews picture books for children who have just graduated from board books in the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Sonja Bolle reviews four new middle grade novels--including Jeanne Birdsall and Lois Lowry's latest--for the Los Angeles Times.

Amy Baldwin reviews two new picture books--including Everybody Bonjours!--for the Charlotte Observer.

Leanne Italie reviews picture books just perfect for Mother's Day--including Mama's Saris, by Pooja Makhijani--for the Seattle Times.

Susan Perren reviews five new children's books for the Globe and Mail, including David Almond's My Dad's a Birdman.

This week's Publisher's Weekly reviews are again available online. (Only three starred titles this week!)

Profile Alert: Sarah Maslin Nir talks to Perry Moore about his novel Hero "whose laudable protagonist Thom Creed is a young superpowered man struggling with revealing his cosmic gifts and his homosexuality." (In the Times.)

Also in the Times, Neel Mukherjee reviews Sherman Alexei's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian. (And here's an Alexei profile, by Maya Jaggi, in the Guardian.)

Rochelle O'Gorman reviews Young Adult audiobook titles--including Jenny Downham's Before I Die--for the Boston Globe.

Mary Hoffman reviews K.M. Grant's Blue Flame for the Guardian.