Elizabeth Bird

This website is one of the more easily navigated websites, despite having advertisements when pages load. Each review is cropped to a short description of the book, an age level, as well as a couple of sentences that catches the users attention. Also, each review comes with tags that are visible from the main page which helps users quickly identify which reviews they may want to view in more detail, or which they should not bother with. One of the more helpful parts of this website is the inclusion of a ‘Best Books’ section that is broken down by year. This distills the reviews down to those books that were deemed worthwhile enough to read, and can be helpful for users who are quickly trying to identify a book to read, rather than understand publishing as a whole. This review site also is helpful in that all the posts are written by Elizabeth Bird, which allows the user to quickly identify whether or not they are typically in agreement with her reviews or not. She has the expertise and personality to back up her claims, and this lends her reviews an air of quality because the user can be sure she purposefully wrote each review thoughtfully. Recommended for use. Ages 13 and up.… (meer)

Featuring near-daily posts from Elizabeth Bird, a youth librarian at the New York Public Library, this blog is a must-read for those with enough time to soak up the details. Bird's book reviews are on the long side, but they read like chats with your favorite book club friend, detailing everything from where a specific title fits in the spectrum of transitional chapter books to cover art choices. Besides reviews, a weekly "Fusenews" segment lists children's book news items of interest and upcoming events, and a Sunday segment features videos that readers might not find on their own, such as author speeches. Bird is good about tagging her posts, but it would be nice to see a master list of tags to choose from. A browsable chronological listing of posts is also notably missing. Overall, though, the value of the content far outweighs these minor issues. Recommended for children's and young adult librarians.… (meer)

Elizabeth Bird, on her Fuse #8 blog, reviews children and teen books. Her reviews are long, literary, and articulate. Besides containing pertinent information like publisher and ISBN, she also has a section that says "Like this? Then try." which is an excellent way to recommend other books in a similar genre that young patrons might be interested in. While updated regularly, the blog is updated a few times a week. The formatting is a little confusing in so far as it can be hard to tell where one entry stops and another begins. However, in terms of pure content, Fuse #8 gives excellent reviews and is well worth keeping an eye on. She also discusses children's literature events and happenings within the field of children's literature. Librarians that work with youth will want to read this blog as the blog is highly respected. Highly Recommended.… (meer)

A product of School Library Journal, Fuse #8 is dedicated to exposing all the best in children’s literature. Written by a New York Public Library children’s librarian, the blog regularly reviews the latest-greatest youth books, from picture books to YA reads. While the blog’s design could be laid out better (perhaps formatting to better announce the end of one post and the beginning of the next?), the content is worth it. The Review-of-the-Day feature is particularly helpful, bringing to attention new and noteworthy titles from all walks of children’s literature (the reviews include the first sentence of the book and links to other blog reviews of the same title). There is also a searchable archive of reviews. A must read for youth librarians and anyone interested in keeping up with the best new kids’ books. Highly recommended.… (meer)