Finding Blog Reviews

When you're looking for commentary or reviews on a particular title, remember you can check our Syndetics information in the webpac to find some reviews published in professional journals, like School Library Journal or Booklist. To find this info, just click on the image of the book cover in the webpac.

If you need or want to read further, a quick trick is to Google the title of the book in quotes, followed by the phrase: blog review.

I tried that with Red Sings from Treetops like this:

"Red Sings from Treetops" blog review

Out of the first 10 hits, 7 were reviews from mostly major kidlit blogs; 1 was a round-up article from the New York Times that included this book, and the remaining 2 hits were from GoodReads and LibraryThing. Pretty good results! And since bloggers often have more time and space for reviews, they can be longer.

This trick works best with recent titles. I tried it with Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and got more random results, including merchandising links. A 2009 title without the current buzz of Red Sings from Treetops, City I Love, brought pretty good results as well. They improved when I tried "City I Love" hopkins blog review--adding in the author's name to the Google search.