James Webb
Content by James Webb
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In London's Hyde Park there stands a statue of a young boy playing a flute. The well-known figure commemorates that world-famous icon of eternal youth, J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan.
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The other day, my college student daughter and I were driving along when we saw a young girl, maybe 13 or 14, walking down the sidewalk following her father, who was at least 30 feet ahead of her.
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For 12-year-old Skiff Beaman, being a kid is especially hard.
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Kids are fantasy literature's natural audience.
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Your Favorite Seuss: A Baker's Dozen by the One and Only Dr. Seuss is a colorful compilation of timeless tales that young readers will treasure for years to come.
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In 1912, a bookseller rummages through trunks full of illuminated medieval manuscripts in a remote Italian castle converted to a Jesuit school.
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During the Cold War, generations grew up with the knowledge that one mistake by those in power could doom the entire planet.
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Louis May is in a situation that many young readers will find unfortunately familiar.
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Lump, the title character in Michael Gruber's remarkably original teen novel, The Witch's Boy, is aptly named: he has a nose like a pig, yellow eyes, pointed ears and a lumpy body covered with
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It should come as no surprise that writer and former hunter James Kilgo, terminally ill, facing that most universal of fears, would leap at the chance to go to Africa as an observer on a big game
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There’s a scandal brewing at the 2012 Olympics, and if Stevie Thomas and Susan Carol Anderson are around, you might expect them to be on the trail of the story.
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Issue:
Children soak up information like sponges because everything is new to them; that sense of wonder we often hear about comes naturally.
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Children's books often take us into worlds of magic and imagination that's what they're supposed to do.
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Plenty of people have read Herman Melville's Moby Dick, and even more are familiar with the story of Ahab's doomed pursuit of the white whale, but few are aware that the climactic event at the
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Looking back on it, Tom Clancy's success seems as improbable as the fate of the protagonists in his many best-selling novels.
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Yes, that Tolkien.
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In an early scene from Ross King's new novel, Domino, our hapless narrator, George Cautley, is led down an overgrown path by two companions in hopes of avoiding an encounter with highwaymen.
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Evie Spooner is a 15-year-old New Yorker growing up in post-World War II Queens; she loves the Dodgers, candy cigarettes, her parents and Frank Sinatra, though not necessarily in that order.
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Evie Spooner is a 15-year-old New Yorker growing up in post-World War II Queens; she loves the Dodgers, candy cigarettes, her parents and Frank Sinatra, though not necessarily in that order.
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Dark fantasy writer Laurell K.
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Tamera Ann Simpson is, in a word, grumpy—the fifth grader doesn’t get along with anyone, especially the annoying Douglas McGinty, or as she calls him, “Muscle Man.” What set
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When I was growing up, teenagers had adulthood thrust upon them in the form of an unpopular war and its accompanying cultural upheaval.
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Guilt is a heavy burden to bear for adults, and it’s doubly so for a child; children don’t have the wisdom that comes with years to discern when events are due merely to chance, and whe
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Armchair explorers will be delighted to hear that Nathaniel Philbrick, the author of the National Book Award-winning In the Heart of the Sea, is back with an adventure that is even more astoni
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If there's one thing writer Gary Paulsen has shown in his "Brian" books, it's that surviving in the wild is dangerous, but it can be done.
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Do you want to know a secret? It's something that many children's book reviewers believe, but don't often reveal.
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How-to books read by folks who already know how-to can't help but elicit rueful chuckles; imagine how a mechanic feels reading Car Repair for Dummies.
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The Engaged Groom (subtitled You're Getting Married Read This Book ) is more intent on quelling that rising gorge in your throat with savvy advice on subjects ranging from picking a date
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Ketchvar III has a job to do, and it isn’t easy; he’s an alien from the faraway planet of Sandoval who has come to Planet Earth to evaluate its inhabitants for the Galactic Federation.
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Henry Hammer is in big trouble, and he needs your help.
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Early on in Stephen King's new novel, Bag of Bones, the narrator—a suspense novelist living in New England—compares himself to his contemporaries and comes up wanting.
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<b>Avenging a sister's murder</b> England is a land of opposites. Readers have a choice between the lighthearted world of say, P.G.
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It's easy to run out of flattering adjectives when reviewing the books of children's author Avi. A prolific author, inventive and smart, he writes books that run the gamut of genre and age group.
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It's an annoying fact, at least to aficionados of other sports, that baseball fans are as enamored of its history as they are of the game itself.
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While baseball has been criticized for its measured pace, it is precisely this that makes it such a wonderful subject for analysis.
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If you're searching for a gift for a member of the greatest generation, this season's offerings of World War II books provide an exciting range of choices.
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One of our favorite Calvin & Hobbes cartoons has the pair philosophizing on the cause and effect of "bug barf." We like the cartoon because it reminds us of what being a child
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See if this sounds familiar: A terrible disaster occurs, killing throngs of innocent people; the warning signs were there, but those in authority were asleep at the switch, either because of ego or i
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Brad Finkle's new book is entitled Holiday Hero: A Man's Manual for Holiday Lighting, but if there's a woman crazy enough to climb a ladder in the dead of winter with a string of Christma
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The acclaimed author of seven works of adult fiction, Ron Carlson hits a homerun with his first novel for young people.
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Your kid knows Marcus Yallow. Heck, your kid might be Marcus Yallow! Who is he?
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Anyone who loves to read can remember the books that were watersheds in their literary lives.
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If it can be said that an artist evokes images of a place or time, then surely the work of Charles Addams should bring to mind New York City in the 20th century.
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In this day and age when science has caught up to criminals and most substances can be readily detected, why go to the trouble to use poison when guns 'n' bullets are available by the gross at your l
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Traveling is invariably an adventure for children. Their fresh eyes and minds can make even the most mundane trip memorable. The short stories in Donald R.
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With so many children getting digital cameras this Christmas, why not make sure they know how to use them?
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Take the uncertainty of the past year and extend it over a decade, and you have an approximation of what the 1960s were like.
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When Phillippa and Timothy Ledger move from their city home to an old English country manor, the MTV-generation twins have a hard time believing that the house might be haunted.
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J.
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Josh Connors lives in the 19th century; well, not literally, but he might as well.
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Children are born scientists: put them outside and with little or no prompting they'll be exploring their environment climbing trees, digging in the ground, wading into creeks, peeking under rocks.
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Jonathan Lethem's newest novel, Girl in Landscape, has drawn comparisons to works as disparate as John Ford's The Searchers and Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita
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Robert B.
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Tony Abbott's quietly powerful new novel, Firegirl, draws the reader in from the very first sentence because of what it doesn't say.
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Leaping Beauty is a children's book that parents will almost certainly grab before their kids will. Why?
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After his successful foray into mainstream fiction with a coming-of-age tale, The Painted House (2001), John Grisham tries his hand at yet another subject with his winning new novel Bleachers.
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Your kids have heard it all before: "When I was your age. . . ." Parents who use that phrase usually get the sigh and the eye roll, followed shortly by the glaze.
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Because children are so non-judgmental, teaching them about history is fun. All you need to do is to give them the facts. They don't want or need too much information about motives or causes.
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Whether you're a wise old hand or a terrified newbie, Pocket Dad: Everyday Wisdom, Practical Tips, &andamp; Fatherly Advice, has tons of practical advice on things dads are just expected t
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David Bowers looks at the duties of fatherhood from a contemporary perspective in Dad's Own Housekeeping Book: 137 Bright Ideas. This book is for the Mr.
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Gregory Boyington, otherwise known as Pappy, was a media darling before there was such a term.
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The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is an unusual story, one of the most difficult and disturbing a teen will ever read. It is the story of an event seared into the fabric of history.
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A photograph serves as the frontispiece for James M.
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A photograph serves as the frontispiece for James M. McPherson's Fields of Fury: The American Civil War.
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When you consider the effect for both good and bad that flight has had on civilization an effect even greater, it could be argued, than the atomic bomb it's remarkable that we know so little about
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Have any of you baseball fans seen the television commercial in which two guys flit about the country going from ballpark to ballpark spending money with wild abandon? Irritating, isn't it?
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In a time not that distant from our own, in a city on the East Coast of America, three children are faced with burdens and challenges that would stagger many adults.
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There's a reason school science fairs and invention contests are so popular, and it's not because mom and dad want to see their little darlings win an award. Kids like to create stuff.
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<B>John Feinstein's winning shot</B> What would you do if you had the chance to be a reporter at the NCAA Final Four? For Stevie Thomas, it's more than a daydream.
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Captain Robert Scott was a loser: the second person to reach the South Pole.
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For more than a generation, British author John Le CarrŽ has written spy novels that both define and transcend the genre.
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Y’Tin Eban is a Vietnamese boy growing up at the end of the Vietnam War, and in many ways he’s not much different from American kids of the era.
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Chris Van Allsburg is a kid's writer for grownups: He tells stories that light the fire of wonder in children, while at the same time kindling memories in their parents.
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Almost 17 percent of American children live in poverty, a startling statistic.
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Set in a small Pennsylvania town in the early 1900s, Lois Lowry's <B>The Silent Boy</B> tells the story of Katy Thatcher, a precocious doctor's daughter, and the unusual boy she meets
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Go ahead, say that baseball isn't the national pastime anymore. Say that football or the NBA has superseded it, and that kids really aren't interested.
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Sitting down to read a book by Avi is like visiting a wise and trusted friend; you know that whatever he wants to talk about, you'll come away informed, entertained and looking forward to your
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What would you do if you were a fifth grader facing a huge homework load every night, and you found out that there was a machine that would do all the work for you?
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Chicago is famous for many things: the Cubs, Bears &andamp; Bulls, hot dogs, the ice cream cone, the Ferris wheel, but strangely, not its skyscrapers.
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What kid wouldn't be scared, living in a spooky old house on Rockinghorse Lane, far away from the nearest neighbor?
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Tom Gallagher is in a jam, and it's largely of his own making. Tom's friend, elderly Doc Altenheimer, can't decide whether or not to sell his ranch to developers.
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The art of comedy involves taking a normally awkward situation and giving it just enough absurdity to make someone laugh. Take Josh Greenwood's situation: he's embarrassed by his father.
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Given the media hype in the 1950s surrounding the Sam Sheppard murder case, it's no surprise that one of the biggest trials of the 20th century is also one of the most misunderstood.
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Most adults would probably agree that the wisdom that comes with age is in large part due to having experienced both love and the death of a loved one.
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Jonah Wish, the central character in Stephen Cole's new young adult novel, Thieves Like Us, has been shuttled between foster homes for most of his life, finding his only refuge inside the bits
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The husband and wife team of Joshua and Anne-Lee Gilder are a couple of latter-day Heinrich Schliemanns, and their Troy is the mysterious death of Tycho Brahe, the 16th-century astronomer.
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When Germany invaded his native Poland in 1939, Yehuda Nir was only nine years old, the youngest member of a wealthy Jewish family and ill-prepared for the tumult that engulfed his life.
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History has layers, like an onion: peel one off, and you suddenly have a slightly different perspective.
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There's a great Far Side cartoon by Gary Larson about what we name our dogs "Rex," for instance and what dogs name themselves: "Tybor Stalker of Cats" or "Queen Th
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Science is not now, nor has it ever been, a glamour job. It involves patience, focus and the ability to withstand disappointment time and time again.
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Several years ago there was an actor, a former bodybuilder, who starred in some B-grade movies. While these films had made money, they really hadn't taken his career to the next level.
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Robert B. Parker has been writing Spenser novels for a quarter century now, and, let's face it, his wise-cracking, hard-hitting, classics-spouting hero is getting a little long in the tooth.
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George Lucas's galaxy-spanning vision, Star Wars, has never flagged in popularity since it premiered in 1977.
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George Lucas's galaxy-spanning vision, Star Wars, has never flagged in popularity since it premiered in 1977.
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George Lucas's galaxy-spanning vision, Star Wars, has never flagged in popularity since it premiered in 1977.
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Dwight David Eisenhower is a biographer's dream and nightmare.
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My teenage son is of the opinion that because I watch the History Channel, I have embarked upon the path of middle-aged dorkdom. I refuse to believe this.
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The books we buy for children are on a different plane from all the other consumer driven trinkets available today.
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I am like the armchair athlete who never played a game in his life: I can't swim a stroke and have an inordinate fear of confined spaces, yet I am absolutely fascinated with deep-sea exploration.
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As dense and lovely as are Shakespeare's words, I often find that I must attune my ear to the rhythm and cadence of his language.
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In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex By Nathaniel Philbrick Viking, $24.95 ISBN 0670891576 Viking Penguin Audio, $14.95, 0141802189 So many books these days are like Chinese
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If the new millennium is the time of tofu and veggieburgers, then the 1940s would have to be represented by a thick, juicy T-bone steak.
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Journeys, for some reason, bring out the philosopher in all of us; from Chaucer to Twain to Steinbeck, writers have always drawn inspiration from their travels.
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When you examine the life of a hero, you almost always find a story more complex than the one you anticipated.
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Building an architectural wonder The reality of the past always stands out in stark contrast to our fuzzy mental pictures.
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The man who was Mission Control during the early days of NASA has written a fascinating autobiography called Flight, a book that takes us back to a time when space exploration was still a fl
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n 1997, photographer Jonathan Waterman began a 2,200-mile journey across the Arctic in pursuit of Inuit culture.
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t's November 1963, and Wayne Tedrow, Jr., a Las Vegas cop, is given $6,000 and sent to Dallas with instructions to make sure a pimp named Wendell Durfee pays the price for knifing a blackjack dealer.
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hrillers are funny things; like most genre fiction, they tend to be formulaic, but conversely they are most successful when they break the rules.
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Ask anybody from Alabama and they'll tell you there are only two things in life of any consequence God and football; it's up to the individual to decide in what order they rank.
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Ask anybody from Alabama and they'll tell you there are only two things in life of any consequence God and football; it's up to the individual to decide in what order they rank.
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These times of uncertainty make the story of a legendary disaster simultaneously important and irrelevant.
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Baseball is a superstitious sport.
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Look, if you’re some kind of fraidy-cat, you don’t need to read this book. Really. If you’re scared to take on anything new, just forget about this one.
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While the main events of history paint the picture of our past in broad strokes, it is often the lesser known stories that fill in the details and enrich our understanding of events.
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As scientists and statesmen grapple with the ever-increasing effects of global warming, there are those who think that things are just fine as they are—making the job of any ecological white
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If there ever was a bad seed, it's Cadel Piggott.
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M.T. Anderson has come up with a mantra for the 21st century: I wanted to buy some things, but I didn't know what they were.
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It's hard to believe, but it has been 30 years since men last walked on the moon, and more than four decades since the great endeavor we call the Space Race first began.
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Meg Finn is dead, and she doesn't like it one bit! As a troubled teenager, she took her first steps onto a road of crime, and the results proved fatal.
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On clear nights, stargazers armed with a small telescope can find the Orion nebula, see the rings of Saturn, the phases of Venus and four of Jupiter's moons even with the interference of city lights
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Sometime between the second and third week of November, if you go outside late at night and look in a clear sky towards the constellation Leo, you will see something marvelous.
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Heller Highland is aptly named; he careens on his bicycle through the steaming streets of New York City like a bat out of the proverbial underworld, dodging trucks, avoiding policemen and frightening
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When a writer hits his stride, he can be like the rabbit in that well-known battery commercial: he keeps going and going, and getting better and better.
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<b>Testing a soldier's loyalty</b> How would you feel if your country was attacked, suddenly, without warning?
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Aidan Errolson is a 12-year-old shepherd boy in the island kingdom of Corenwald.
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In our media-oriented culture, history equals big business. Dissected, deconstructed, glorified and, of course, relived on the big screen, the past is a major money-maker.
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If your word-hungry sixth grader has reached the saturation point on Harry Potter, or perhaps never really liked the straight-arrow boy magician to begin with, here's a fact that will make him or her
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Todd Anthony is a typical 14-year-old growing up in a small town in the early 1970s.
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Atul Gawande writes for The New Yorker, but by trade he‘s a surgeon; after a particularly harrowing operation in which the patient nearly died, he took a hard look at what
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Readers of Jay Asher's debut novel for teens, Thirteen Reasons Why, should be forewarned never has a page-turner of a book been so difficult to read.
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In the 1990s, a shipwreck was discovered just off the coast of Panama, and from all indications it was a ship from the age of discovery, that exciting, tragic time when two civilizations discovered
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Alexa Daley lives in a land where the people are afraid, so afraid that they've built a wall around their city.
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White Star Lines built the Titanic to make money, but it's doubtful they ever imagined that the ship would continue to generate profits almost a century after it sank.
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If you could go anyplace in the world, where would you go? If you could visit any era, what would it be? These questions lie at the heart of Maiya Williams' new novel, The Golden Hour.
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<B>Trouble at the Tap 'n' Type</B> Adults think they have it sooooo rough! Oh, my boss was mean to me today! And my back hurts! Puh-leeez.
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Taylor Jackson and Whitney Connolly are two sides of the same coin.
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So many books these days are like Chinese cooking—they're a great meal, but they don't stay with you very long. Books that endure tell us about lives we can only dream of.
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In the 1980s, Geoffrey Ward and Ken Burns created what may be the most riveting and revolutionary documentary in television history, The Civil War.
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Jock lives a seemingly idyllic life; it’s the summer between eighth and ninth grade and he spends his days working an admittedly easy job on his grandfather’s golf course.
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Dennis Birch's life has taken an unsettling turn. As a Spanish-speaking baseball scout somewhere in Latin America, working for an unnamed major-league team, his future seems bleak.
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For many years, my long hot summers have culminated in the sweet words of a man who's been dead for half a millennium.
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Today's average 10-year-old is a lot different from you or me at that age; heck, they're different from when my own kids were 10, and that hasn't been too long ago.
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What it is about today's society that gives fathers so much disrespect, especially around Father's Day?
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Gwen Page has a life many musically talented teens would give their sheet music for, but it isn't an easy one.
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