Book-A-Day Almanac

Review Blog.  Creator Anita Silvey describes the Children's Book-A-Day Almanac as a "daily love letter to a book or author."  Every day, Silvey explores a classic book or a book on its way to being a classic.  Each review provides an in-depth summary and analysis of the book, addressing content and theme, as well as sample images from inside the book.  In addition to posting daily, she lets readers know what's coming up for the blog.  The website is beautifully designed and easy to navigate.  Readers can search and browse past entries by age group, subject, author/illustrator, book type, or date of entry.  Silvey's use of subject tags is simple and easy to navigate.  Readers can clearly see Silvey's passion for the books she writes about, and can gain a great overview and insight from her posts.  Book-A-Day just celebrated it's one year birthday, let's hope it survives to celebrate many more!  Highly recommended, *****

The Goddess of YA Literature

Review Blog.  Teri Lesesne, aka the Goddess of YA Literature, blogs book reviews daily from Sam Houston State College where she serves as a professor in Library Science.  The Goddess reviews mostly for younger readers- picture books and early chapter books fill most of her posts, though she also makes room for middle chapter books.  Her reviews often run no more than five sentences, and often are two or three.  Most reviews are made of a single sentence of summary, and one or two sentences of glowing review.  The Goddess seems to adore every book she encounters, which is not necessarily a bad thing but at times she seems like the little librarian who cried "excellent!"  One excellent feature of her blog is her grouping of books within themes.  This would be of great use to teachers and librarians for quick story time picks.  She also makes great use of a tagging system which facilitates easy navigation of seven year's worth of daily reviews.  This is a good blog to review for quick picks, but do not expect a critical understanding of contemporary books. Additional selection, **

Guys Lit Wire

Review Blog.  Guys Lit Wire pulls together books for boys, a notoriously hard group to find material for.  In near-daily posts, the group of bloggers behind Guys Lit Wire review books that will get guys excited about reading.  Most of the books reviewed are targeted at a middle school to high school range, though a few lower level books slip in here and there.  Most reviews are long and include passages, critiques, and the personal reflections of the bloggers.  Many of the writers include a short excerpt on the main page with a link for more material, so that readers can decide if they want to go through the full review or not.  The bloggers employ a system of tagging, though navigation is not always clear to the reader, with categories including, "Flying Cars and Lost Cities," and "So You Want to Rule the World."  Guys Lit Wire reviews a wide variety of fiction and nonfiction, contemporary and classic.  They push the edges of what boys would be interested in; they don't settle for flashy action books, but encourage the adults who influence boy readers to get into the classics too.  Definitely recommended for book lovers who work with teenage boys.  Recommended, ****