Booklist Online: More than 130,000 book reviews for librarians, book groups, and book lovers - from the trusted experts at the American Library Association

The Worst Thing about My Sister, the latest from Jacqueline Wilson, queen of English YA lit, won’t be out in the states until later this year. In the meantime, her legions of fans can get their fix of British accents and comic book fight-sequences with this dramatic, funny trailer:

The Sami Rohr Prize for excellence in Jewish Literature was announced yesterday.The prize “recognizes the important role of emerging writers in examining the Jewish experience.” When They Come for Us We’ll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry, by Gal Beckerman

Always eager for a good literary dust-up, I read with interest the news that Booker Prize winner Ben Okri had responded to comments made last month by his editor, Robin Robertson. In Sameer Rahim’s January 23 Telegraph article, “The Mystery of Poetry Editing: From T. S. Eliot to John Burnside,” Robertson, a Scotsman, claimed (or “confessed”) that he had [...]

Have a burning question about etiquette or literature? Ask a book! Dear On the Road by Jack Kerouac, What’s the secret to a perfect soufflé? Mine always fall right as I’m bringing them to a table full of guests. It’s so embarrassing. Please help! —Clueless Chef Dear Clueless Chef, Did you know you can drive [...]

When I first heard of the indie publisher ChiZine, I was certain they were Chicago-based—and assumed they had started life as a ‘zine. And yet I never ran into any ChiZine folks in my Chicago perambulations. Then, at a recent conference, I was introduced to the very nice folks behind the imprint and learned they were [...]

The winner of the Hatchet Job of the Year Award has been announced. For his 1,000-word evisceration of Michael Cunningham’s By Nightfall, Adam Mars-Jones takes the cake (with a golden hatchet in it, naturally) and a year’s supply of potted shrimp, too. Judge Sam Leith praised Mars-Jones’ savage attack thusly: “Adam Mars-Jones’s review of Michael [...]

One of the year’s most prestigious (and lucrative!) poetry awards was announced last week. This year’s winner of the Kingley Tufts award is Timothy Donnelly for his collection, The Cloud Corporation.  Donnelly will receive not only the distinction of being the winner, but a hefty $100,000. Katherine Larson is the winner of the Kate Tufts [...]

In case you haven’t heard, Aardman Animation, those wonderful folks who brought us Wallace and Gromit and Chicken Run, are doing a stop-motion version of Gideon Defoe’s splendidly wacky 2004 comic adventure, The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists. The movie is scheduled for release in March, and I think, if you’re a fan of [...]

As a child it was my dream to put the family’s pure-bred, tortoiseshell Himalayan cat on a leash and parade her around the neighborhood. Unfortunately, this cat’s Siamese-influenced DNA and generally grumpy disposition meant I could barely pet, let alone catch, hold, and harness her. A few feeble attempts left me morose. As a consolation [...]

Baratunde Thurston’s How to Be Black was published on the first day of Black History Month, which also happens to be the day our Februrary 1st Spotlight on Black History hit shelves and screens. Booklist reviewer Vernon Ford calls the book by Thurston, The Onion‘s director of digital communciations, “a hilarious look at the complexities [...]