Tandem Insights

Biographies for Teens

Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.  And these biographies prove it.  Don’t let your teens be satisfied with any old bio that has over 100 pages.  Convince your teens that biographies don’t have to be boring. 

Start with a familiar name.  YA author Chris Crutcher has written his childhood into a book, King of the Mild Frontier.  Fans of his fiction will not want to miss this inside scoop and those who are looking for a funny story will also find themselves hooked into this bittersweet biography.

Then move on to a memoir of a regular girl.  Grief Girl by Erin Vincent is written like a novel with the present tense prose making the story feel immediate even though it all took place back in 1983 when Erin’s parents both died within a week of each other when she was fourteen.  Brutally honest and ultimately uplifting, this memoir is not to be missed.

A great biography is also a great story.  Check out these great life stories for your middle and high school students.

Favorite Science Picture Book Authors

Today I’d like to feature seven of our favorite authors or author-illustrators whose science titles are beyond comparison: Nic Bishop, Vicki Cobb, Gail Gibbons, Steve Jenkins, Sandra Markle, Sy Montgomery, and Seymour Simon. 

Each of these authors or author-illustrators has earned a broad-level of recognition from teachers, librarians, students and others.  Glancing through the titles on today’s featured list I came up with a few reason’s why each are awarded a place on so many school, library and home bookshelves. Please see if you agree:

• Movitating--Eye-catching, exciting and appealing illustrations enhance a commitment to learning, knowing and using science
• Accessible--Great potential for classroom teaching as well as a simple and effective approach to science themed topic to individual study
• Outstanding--Inspires and informs while being accurate, concise and clear
• Useful--Encourages further scientific exploration and allows for curriculum connections

A few well-reputed awards to recognize outstanding science books written for a K-12 audience include the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children, National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) Outstanding Science Trade Books for Students K–12, Giverny Book Award, American Institute of Physics (AIP) Science Writing Award for Children, and Washington Post-Children's Book Guild Nonfiction Award.

View some of the award winning titles from these favorite science authors.

Elephant and Piggie Books

Get ready for the funniest books of the year! I was audibly cracking up the first time I read these, in the publisher’s booth at the ALA exhibit. Mo Willems has created the ultimate early reader series. Lovable characters, humorous stories, and brilliant, deceptively simple illustrations make these irresistible.

Elephant Gerald (Get it? Say it aloud, and think of jazz music) and Piggie are best friends. Piggie has a generally positive outlook on things, while Gerald tends toward pessimism. Each book in the series follows a conversation they are having with each other. These books are great choices for reading along with young kids -- have the adult do one character and the child the other.

Check out Piggie’s facial expression when she shows her party invitation to Gerald in my personal favorite of the four books, I Am Invited to a Party! (pg. 6). The characters’ emotions are impeccably conveyed in Willems’ pencil-and-ink illustrations. That’s what makes these characters and their stories so endearing. If it were up to me, one of these books would definitely win the Geisel Award this year.

View these titles in the Tandem Library Books Online Bookstore

If You Like Twilight...

So your YA girls can’t get enough of Bella Swan and her star-crossed romance with the incredibly gorgeous vampire Edward? Maybe some of them even prefer Bella’s werewolf friend Jacob who also happens to be madly in love with her. They’ve already devoured Twilight, New Moon, and Eclipse. Breaking Moon, the continuation of this love story, won’t be out for a whole very, very long year. What books are out there to satisfy the romantic cravings of those YA girls? We’ve created a list of some titles we think might just take the edge off the long wait.

Wicked Lovely features fairies instead of vampires, and instead of Aislinn wanting to become a fairie, she desperately wants to stay human. But there’s still a love triangle with lots of lovely tension. The Summer King needs Aislinn to become his Summer Queen. Aislinn has always been taught to avoid fairies. Besides, she has a human boyfriend whom she loves to distraction. Unfortunately for her, the wicked Winter Queen has other ideas, and Aislinn is swept up in a faerie war. Her limited options are death, reign as Summer Queen, or, failing that, become the Winter Girl, as all failed potential Summer Queens are cursed to do. This one felt a lot like Twilight to me, with the world of the faeries colliding with that of the humans with Aislinn caught between the two.

The fantastic and romantic are in evidence from the beginning in Keturah and Lord Death. Keturah, a storyteller, lost in the woods and close to death, meets a surprisingly dashing Lord Death. She spins him a story about a girl searching for true love. However, the story has no ending, so Lord Death allows her one more day to find her true love. But as Keturah examines her life and her village, she begins to wonder who her true love really is – the local lord’s son or Lord Death himself. Keturah, like Bella, is an outsider among a group of close-knit locals; she's always felt herself to be apart, different, which can be a very appealing aspect to a teen trying to navigate the treacherous currents of adolescence.

Here it is: vampires and werewolves together in the same book. In Tantalize, Quincie, human, loves with a hybrid-werewolf, Kieran, and works in a vampire-themed restaurant. This time it's the werewolf who does not want to return the hero's affections, for fear of hurting her. When the chef at the restaurant is murdered, werewolf-style, suspicion falls on Kieran. But what’s up with the new chef and his bizarre menus? Not to mention Quincie’s increasing dependence on a blood-red beverage…

For more great suggestions for your Stephenie Meyer fans: If You Like Twilight...

For Your Youngest Readers

Choosing picture books that will entice your pre-readers is no easy task, but if you have the right books, reading with this age group is very rewarding.  They can now understand more complex stories that you won’t mind repeating as many times as they will want to hear it.  But what makes a good picture book for your pre-readers?

Here are some elements that we recommend looking for:

• Repetition – Get kids involved with the storytime by allowing them to predict what comes next.
• Language Play – Use these stories to develop early phonemic awareness.
• Rhythm and Rhyme – These stories read aloud well and invite listener participation.

Other aspects to think about are humor, surprising endings, unusual characters and child-friendly illustrations.

We especially liked the illustrations in Digby Takes Charge by Caroline Jayne Church, which depict the determination of Digby the sheep dog to make the sheep do what he wants them to do, and the satisfaction on both his and the sheep’s faces when they finally find a solution that makes them all happy.  This is a cute animal story that teaches the importance of “please” without taking itself too seriously.

Add to your collection of Mother Goose rhymes with Mother Goose's Storytime Nursery Rhymes by Alison Green and illustrated by Axel Scheffler (The Gruffalo), which puts the familiar rhymes into a narrative context that will catch kids’ interest and help them to see how the stories relate to their lives as Mother Goose tells the stories to her goslings to keep them from wandering off.  Designed to be read aloud, this volume of familiar and forgotten favorites will bring to life these stories to a new generation.

And don’t forget to introduce your youngest readers to poetry.  There are so many great children’s poetry collections out there, but even so, you will not want to be without Jane Yolen’s latest offering: Here's a Little Poem: A Very First Book of Poetry.  This collection of sixty poems by various writers is specifically designed with preschoolers and primary graders in mind.  With starred reviews from both SLJ and Booklist to urge you on, this oversize volume should not be overlooked.

More great suggestions for your preschoolers to first graders: New Picture Books for PreK-1