Jan 7
2006
In the past two weeks Meg Cabot has released two brand-new standalone novels: the YA supernatural romance Avalon High and the mystery/suspense story Size 12 Is Not Fat. Both feature bright, funny...
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Dec 26
2005
Kiyohiko Azuma is the author of two highly entertaining manga titles: Azumanga Daioh and Yotsuba&!. Azuma’s books are funny and innocent, with most of the humor in the stories coming from his tal...
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Dec 21
2005
Nothing much happens in the first three volumes of Kiyohiko Azuma’s Yotsuba&!. The series features a preschool-age heroine with green hair, boundless energy, and a blissfully innocent attitude. Entire chapters are devoted to things like moving a TV, doing the laundry, or visiting a department store...
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Oct 25
2005
If you’re in the mood for some classic “Who will this sweet, innocent girl end up with?” shōjo manga, you can’t go wrong with Nanaji Nagamu’s Parfait Tic. While this story has more than its ...
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Oct 25
2005
Kiyoko Arai’s Beauty Pop is the oft-told shōjo story of a quiet girl attending a high school that’s ruled by a group of gorgeous male bullies… but in Arai’s story, the bullies are the sons of...
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Oct 25
2005
Ichiha’s Pheromania Syndrome is yet another shōjo manga about a physically mismatched couple. Ichiha’s tall, masculine heroine, Hatori, is in love with her tiny, delicate (male) childhood fr...
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Oct 25
2005
Kamio Yoko’s Hana Yori Dango (English title: Boys Over Flowers) was a massively successful manga that ran for ELEVEN YEARS. (The author once said that toward the end of the series she found herse...
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Oct 25
2005
She’s not exactly a groundbreaking new talent, but Mimi Tajima’s stories (Koi Suru ¼, Ichigo Channel, and Aoi Spice) are consistently excellent examples of conventional shōjo manga. Tajima’s...
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Oct 25
2005
Hisaya Nakajo’s Hana-Kimi (original Japanese title: Hanazakari no Kimitachi E, English title: Hana-Kimi: For You in Full Blossom) is my favorite of the seemingly endless number of stories about a ...
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Oct 25
2005
Emura’s W-Juliet is one of those rare romances (of any type) that features a main couple that, in addition to being attracted to one another, are completely believable as friends. Despite an outw...
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Oct 24
2005
Yayoi Ogawa is the author of three josei mangas: Kimi ha Pet (English title: Tramps Like Us), Candy Life, and Baby Pop. Ogawa’s distinctive art style and truly bizarre romantic pairings have litt...
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Oct 24
2005
Tomoko Hayakawa’s Perfect Girl Evolution (licensed by Del Rey, original Japanese title Yamato Nadeshiko Shichihenge, English title: The Wallflower) is my favorite manga. Picture, if you will, a t...
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Aug 25
2005
Farley Mowat, author of the Canadian classics Owls in the Family and Never Cry Wolf, is actually quite the figure of controversy in Canada. His detractors (including The Toronto Star) have sugges...
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Aug 25
2005
Scottish-born author A. A. Milne is best remembered as the author of the Winnie-the-Pooh books. This delightful series has the distinction of being perhaps the only literary creation that Disney ...
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Aug 25
2005
Frenchman Lewis Trondheim is the author of about fifty bazillion comic books, the majority of which are being (slowly) translated into English. His series Dungeon, co-written with Joann Sfar, is ...
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Jul 11
2005
Marjorie Weinman Sharmat's Nate the Great is an amateur detective with a loyal dog, an assortment of weird friends, and a profound (perhaps existential?) hunger for pancakes. He is also the hero ...
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Jul 11
2005
Debi Gliori's Pure Dead... series is like an amalgamation of the Artemis Fowl stories, the Addams Family cartoons, and the Series of Unfortunate Events books. Nothing about these books is particu...
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Jun 24
2005
If the children's books of George MacDonald have "fallen out of fashion", then the books of Margery Sharp are the literary equivalent of the bustle... and I really have no idea why. What happened...
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Jun 24
2005
Much like fellow Wordcandy authors Julia Quinn and Suzanne Enoch, Karen Hawkins is less spectacular than she is consistently entertaining. She has yet to write a novel that knocks my socks off, b...
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Jun 24
2005
English mystery novelist and playwright Dorothy L. Sayers understood that what this world really needed was a crime-solving hero that was equal parts Sherlock Holmes and Bertie Wooster. She set o...
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Apr 24
2005
It was a tremendous blow to readers everywhere when Shel Silverstein died of a heart attack in 1999. Still, like Douglas Adams, Silverstein got an awful lot done during the limited time he spent ...
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Apr 24
2005
(Information complied with the assistance of Colleen, an University of Oregon reference librarian, and Eric Gjovaag, webmaster of the The Wizard of Oz Info website. Many thanks to both of them!) ...
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Apr 24
2005
John D. Fitzgerald's Great Brain stories about Tom, his brilliant and conniving older brother, are a series of charmingly offbeat tall tales. According to Fitzgerald, Tom was the youngest con man...
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Mar 29
2005
Contrary to popular myth, Edward Gorey was not British. In fact, he only traveled outside of the United States once, on a trip to the Scottish Isles. Gorey was born in Chicago in 1925, he studie...
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Mar 29
2005
English author Mary Norton was the author of two children's literature classics: the Borrowers series and Bed Knob and Broomstick, which inspired the (...sigh) Disney film of the same name. Norto...
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Mar 29
2005
Laura Zigman was one of those authors whose first book, 1998's Animal Husbandry, came out hot on the heels of Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary, and because it was also a story about a romanc...
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Mar 29
2005
British humorist Jerome K. Jerome's stories are like slightly sub-par P.G. Wodehouse novels. (Ordinarily that would be a criticism, but most of Wodehouse's stories are works of such staggering ge...
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Mar 29
2005
I love Beverly Cleary's books. Mostly because they're awesome, of course, but also because Ramona, Beezus, Ellen, Henry Huggins, and all their friends live in the same neighborhood that my late, ...
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Mar 20
2005
Frank Gilbreth, Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey are the co-authors of Cheaper by the Dozen and Belles on Their Toes, two classic memoirs that no one from a large family should miss. Frank Jr. an...
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Mar 20
2005
Bill Watterson is the creator of the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes. Calvin and Hobbes, in Watterson's own words, was about "private realities, the magic of imagination, and the specialness of cer...
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