West of the Moon

These are dark times for children’s literature. Pick up a book for the 9-12 year-old set and you just don’t know what you’re going to find. Whether it’s the murderous foliage of The Night Gardener, the implications of Nightingale’s Nest, or the serious subject matter of The Red Pencil, 2014 is proba......more

Another one I read over the Atlantic ocean, unplugged from reality and transported somewhere else. Gorgeous, magical, a mix of historical fiction and fairy/folklore of Scandinavia. I loved it.......more

It may be my biases as a reader speaking, but I think folklore makes an excellent vehicle for discussing the subject of immigration. Folktales and myths are full of journeys, transformations, and unpredictable dangers. Sometimes the heroine of a folktale finds that the tools that have worked in her......more