Over the years, we've found Jen J's Starred Reviews Spreadsheet* to be very useful. However, since this resource is no longer being updated, we decided to create our own version to help us keep track of the most notable books being published for young people during the calendar year. We will use this spreadsheet to curate and collate the starred reviews from six journals:
We recognize that other sites/blogs also honor books with starred reviews. However, for this project, we are focusing on the six trade journals listed above.
Some notes about how the spreadsheet is organized.
Reviews are color coded in the following ways:
6 stars = Blue
5 stars = Purple
4 stars = Pink
3 stars = Green
2 stars = Orange
1 star = Red
Each column represents information about the book that is typically provided by the journal. However, if some pieces of information are missing from a given review, we will use our knowledge of literature published for young people to fill in the gaps. We may sometimes get things wrong.
When viewing/using the spreadsheet, you should be able to sort each column to help you get the most out of the data. However, at this time, we do not plan to share access to this spreadsheet. Share requests will go unanswered.
Finally, two lessons we've already learned as a result of this work are:
It's easy to get things wrong. With that in mind, we will definitely make mistakes along the way. Like all mistakes, they are not intentional. Feel free to correct your own records as you use our data to make booklists, etc.
This spreadsheet is never really up to date. While we will do our best to record starred reviews during the month they are issued, we also appreciate your patience when we inevitably fall behind.
Happy Reading!
Jennifer & Donalyn
* We reached out to Jen J a couple of times to ask permission to continue her work, but never heard back. We hope she sees this new iteration of her original spreadsheet as a testament to how valuable we found her efforts.
