Classics, Nonfiction, and Children's Literature
A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park (Clarion Books, 2011) is a fictionalized version of two related stories in the recent history of Sudan. It tells two parallel stories, one in the 1980s and the other just a few years ago. In the early story, a young boy is caught in the crossfires of the Southern
Iqbal by Francesco D’Adamo (translated by Ann Leonori) is a young adult novel based on the true story of a boy who, as a child slave in Pakistan, changed the outlook for the hopeless children who work at the rug-making factory he has been transferred to. As told from the fictionalized perspective of a young girl
Remember the last dream you had that seemed to be completely random? One minute it makes sense: the next minute it doesn’t. Fortunately, the Milk by Neil Gaiman is a strange, dream-like story. It is a story told by a father to his children as an explanation of why he took too long to go to
For the Right to Learn by Rebecca Langston-George (Capstone, September 2015) is a picture book biography of Malala Yousafzai that gives younger readers a background of just what she was able to accomplish. I’ve said before that her story is inspiring, and I think this book did a great job of also making it accessible to young
In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson by Bette Bao Lord (published 1984) tells of one girl’s journey from her traditional Chinese home to New York City in 1947. How can Shirley hold on to her heritage in such a strange land? At the beginning of the story, the girl is known by
The Homework Machine by Dan Gutman is a clever chapter book written from the perspective of four different preteens who have been caught cheating on their homework with a “homework machine.” The book is also fun as the students overcome their own prejudices and judgments of one another in order to unite in using the
Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai (2011 National Book Award for Young People and Newbery Honor Award) is a novel in poetry about a young girl’s relocation to American from Vietnam during the Vietnam War. It is about the challenge of starting over and the pain of discrimination in a strange new country and
Titanic: Voices from the Disaster by Deborah Hopkinson (originally published 2012) is an amazing nonfiction account of the Titanic disaster, drawn directly from first-hand accounts written by the survivors of the Titanic crash, as well as the letters and notes of those who did not survive. What most impressed me by Ms. Hopkinson’s account was the amazing readability
The Stories Julian Tells by Ann Cameron (originally published 1987) is a clever early chapter book about a boy and his younger brother, along with the crazy stories Julian makes up to explain the world around him. When seven-year-old Julian does not know the answer to his three-year-old brother Huey’s questions, he makes up stories! For example, he tells his
Red Berries, White Clouds, Blue Sky by Sandra Dallas is an appropriate book for reading just before our country’s Independence Day. It focuses on a Japanese American family during the early part of World War II, when thousands of people of Japanese descent were relocated to special “camps”. The Japanese internment is not someting I
Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan is a powerful story about a rich and spoiled Mexican girl whose sudden impoverishment in the 1930s takes her into the migrant worker camps of California. It teaches much about the Great Depression as well as discrimination during that period. At the beginning of the novel, Esperanza lives a
The nonfiction picture book Dinosaurs from Head to Tail by Stacey Roderick and illustrated by Kwanchai Moriya (Kid Can Press, 2015) provides the young dinosaur fan with a guessing game. First, a two-page spread shows a zoomed-in view of a part of a dinosaur’s body, with a question for the reader to determine which dinosaur
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