Book list Do you dare to eat a peach? Certainly the endpapers of this book, which illustrate a variety of mouthwatering peaches, inspire one to do so. Two small, long-nosed insects contemplate the beauty of a particular peach (the very last one of the whole summer), which hangs on a tree above them. They decide they must eat it at once! But when a third green insect with top hat and cane arrives, he cries, Stop! You can't eat that peach! It's the...More

Horn Book As Harrison writes in her author's note, "In childhood, big is good. Big is impressive, aspirational. But somewhere along the way, the world begins to tell us something different: That big is bad. That being big is undesirable." Words matter, as a beautiful little Black girl learns. The girl, a dancer who wears a leotard and tutu throughout the book, "grew and learned and laughed...and grew and grew and grew. And it was good.....More

School Library Journal K-Gr 2-Because they haven't got a spot of black on their bodies, the colorful birds of Africa envy Blackbird. They extol his feathers that "gleam all colors in the sun" in their songs and dances. And although he assures them that "Color on the outside is not what's on the inside," he generously shares the blackening brew in his gourd. First he adds a necklace of midnight to Ringdove, then markings o...More

Library Journal In a world plagued by cataclysmic tectonic activity, the only way to survive is to constantly prepare for the next fifth season. But no one is ready for the scope of the disaster that strikes when the capital city of a continent-wide empire is subsumed in a massive rift that spreads hundreds of miles. Using alternating points of view, Jemisen explores the lives of several characters in the years leading up to the cataclysmic disaster. -VER...More

Book list *Starred Review* Pynchon's debut novel, V., appeared 50 years ago, and ever since he's been tracking dubious covert actions and the arc and consequences of technology in novels of labyrinthine complexity, impish wit, and open-armed compassion. Of late, his inquiry has taken the form of rambunctious and penetrating crime novels. Inherent Vice (2009), currently being adapted for film, is set in 1960s Los Angeles and features a pothead PI a...More

Kirkus A sweeping environmental history of the Gulf of Mexico that duly considers the ravages of nature and man.In light of the 2010 devastation of the BP oil spill, environmental historian Davis (History and Sustainability Studies/Univ. of Florida; An Everglades Providence: Marjory Stoneman Douglas and the American Environmental Century, 2009, etc.) presents an engaging, truly relevant new study of the Gulf as a powerful agent in the American story, one ...More

Publishers Weekly Canadian writer Shields's novels and short stories ( Swann ; The Republic of Love , etc.) are intensely imagined, humanely generous, beautifully sustained and impeccably detailed. Despite rave reviews on both sides of the Atlantic, she has yet to achieve an audience here; one hopes this latest effort, shortlisted for the Booker Prize, will be her breakthrough. It is at once a playful sendup of the art of biography and a serious explo...More