Reference Book Review: A to Zoo by Carolyn Lima and Rebecca Thomas

How did I not know about this resource when I was a Children's librarian? Awesome resource for finding picture books. In the early 80's John and Carolyn Lima had a vision to create a reference book to provide better subject access to picture books for children. A to Zoo was created. A to Zoo has 13,755 titles cataloged under 1,215 subjects. Start with your ABC's and and end with Zoo's.

Animal books-check
Growing up-check
Flowers-check
Weather-check

and so much more.

There is also a bibliographic guide, title index, and an illustrator index.

Great resource for librarian, teachers, and parents.

Reference Book Review: American Eras

American Eras Early American Civilizations and Exploration to 1600 is a very interesting book. This book consists of eleven chapters. Each chapter is broken down into the following categories: Chronology, Overview, Topics in the News, Headline Makers, and Publications.

Chronology is a time line of important events to 1600, Overview gives you information about the topic, Topics in the News breaks it down by year, Headline Makers highlights a couple prominent people of that era, and then Publications lists related reading material.

Reference Book Review: Encyclopedia of the American Civil War

Encyclopedia of the American Civil War is a five volume set. It consists of more than 1,600 essays that describe and explain a myriad of aspects that cover the coming of the war, its conduct, and its consequences in a political, military, and social context. It also provides biographical essays on major and minor military, political, diplomatic, and cultural figures. These essays describe more than sixty major engagements as well as important skirmishes. They have also tried to cover broad areas such as strategy and tactics, social trends, and technological innovations. Articles are in alphabetical order.

Volume I A-C
Volume II D-I
Volume III J-Q
Volume IV R-Z
Volume V List of Documents, Source Documents, Appendices, Chronology of the American Civil War, Glossary, Bibliography, and Index

You can find a list of entries at the beginning of the book.

Civil War buffs should check this encyclopedia out.

Reference Book Review: The Encyclopedia of the Ancient World

The Encyclopedia of the Ancient World is a three volume set that presents a survey of the cultures and civilizations of the world from prehistory through about 700 C.E. It predominately provides coverage of the ancient Greeks and Romans but also examines the civilizations, cultures, traditions, monuments and artifacts, significant wars and battles, and important personages of Europe (outside Greece and Rome), Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Oceania. This three volume set also provides descriptions of important documents of antiquity, definitions, and overviews of general topics that provide cross-cultural views of the ancient world. There are 1, 195 articles that consist of 26 overviews and 1, 169 alphabetically arranged encyclopedic articles that range from 250-word biographies of important figures such as Marc Antony and Xunzi to 2,500 word essays on major subjects such as Imperial Rome and Classical Greece.

The time span covered ranges from prehistory to 700 C. E. There is a Contents, Publisher's Note, list of Contributors, a Key to Pronunciation, Maps index, and a Complete List of Contents for all three volumes. If you are studying ancient civilizations or needing to do a report you might want to take a look at these.

Reference Book Review: Reading Rants by Jennifer Hubert

I was actually inspired to start the Book Nook because of the Reading Rants website. http://www.readingrants.org/ I go there pretty religiously to see what Ms. Hubert has read. Her reviews of the books really make you want to read them. I only get upset when the book sounds really good and it's not been published yet. Her book is pretty cool too.

Reading Rants covers 100 books divided among ten topics, with ten titles for each topic. Bibliographic information is provided for each title followed by six categories: The Story, The Message, Who's it For?, Why it Rocks, Hook it Up With, and Read More about It.

The Story summarizes the full story, including the ending. Expect spoilers!

The Message includes the prominent themes.

Who's It For? tells you grade level recommendations and if there is strong language, sexual situations, or violent scenes.

Why It Rocks explains why Ms. Hubert choose to include the title in her book.

Hook It Up gives similar titles to recommend.

Read More About It lists where the book was reviewed in professional journals.

Make sure you check out her website. It really does rock!

The Grimm Legacy: Borrow the Magic if you Dare! by Polly Shulman

Reading Level: Juvenile
(4 out of 5)

The story revolves around Elizabeth and the New-York Circulating Material Repository. Elizabeth's life is similar to Cinderella's. She lives with her father and stepmother and has two stepsisters. Elizabeth's history teacher tells her about a page position at the repository and she gets the job. Strange things have been going on. A huge bird has been spotted, a page has disappeared, and items have gone missing. Especially items that have magic. Elizabeth, Anajali, Aaron, and Marc take it upon themselves to solve the mystery. This was a fun read.

Speaking as a librarian I think it would be really cool to work at the New-York Circulating Material Repository. The repository lends out objects rather than books. So if you need a fondue pot, a tea set, or Marie Antoinette's everyday wig you can borrow them from the repository. Pretty cool huh! It's also home to the Grimm Collection. Powerful items straight out of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales such as seven league boots, a table that produces a fest in the blink of an eye, and Snow White's stepmothers sinister mirror that talks in riddles.

Spirit Bound by Richelle Mead

Over the weekend I read Spirit Bound by Richelle Mead. This is the 5th book in the Vampire Academy series. I really thought this was going to be the last book but it better not be because the ending leaves you hanging. Good News, there is one last book called Last Sacrifice due out in December of 2010.

I'm not going to talk about the book I'm just going to ask a question.

For those of you who have read this series who do you want Rose to end up with:

Dimitri

Or

Adrian

I'm thinking she will end up with Dimitri but I really like Adrian. I'm so torn! Give your answer in the comments and you have a chance to win a free book from our book sale room. Deadline for the contest is August 9, 2010.