Children's Corner @ Clifton Park-Halfmoon Public Library

Juvenile Fiction & Nonfiction

Selected by Ann Sayers, Reference & Youth Services Librarian.
Scheduled to be published in the Times Union on 2/2005.

Title: The Big House
Author: Coman, Carolyn
Publisher: Front Street 2004
For those who like Lemony Snicket. While their parents are in jail (one kind of "Big House") Ivy and her brother Ray are consigned to live in a mansion (another kind of "Big House") owned by the very people who conspired to send their parents to prison.
Title: Chasing Vermeer
Author: Balliett, Blue
Publisher: Scholastic Press 2003
For those ready to go "beyond" The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler; precocious children get involved in an art theft. Codes and skull-duggery!
Title: A Child’s Christmas in Wales
Author: Thomas, Dylan
Publisher: Candlewick Press 2004
Illustrations by Chris Raschka . Lyrical language that simply begs to be read aloud, any time of the year, but especially in winter.
Title: The Crow-Girl
Author: Bredsdorf, Bodil. Translated from Danish
Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux 2004
A spare almost heart-breaking survival story. Beautifully written: and just when your heart is squeezed tight, everything turns out all right.
Title: Funerals and Fly Fishing
Author: Bartek, Mary
Publisher: H. Holt 2004
An appealing "boy" book, for Korman and Paulsen readers. Brad is dispatched East to spend time with a grandfather he has never met. Old man Stanislawski runs a funeral home. Brad is both spooked and curious. Gradually the boy and his grandfather get acquainted. Easy, accessible, light-hearted and touching.