Reading Lists for These Times: For Young Readers
Recent events have left many of us feeling worried and uneasy, and in times like these we need reminders of the courage and strength around the world. We hope you and the young readers in your life find comfort in these nonfiction books about determined children and the impact they have on their communities and in these novels about love, generosity, and kindness. We send wishes for peace, hope, and strength to readers of all ages, everywhere.
All around the world, girls are going to school, working, dreaming up big futures—they are soccer players and surfers, ballerinas and chess champions. Yet we know so little about their daily lives. We often hear about challenges and catastrophes in the news, and about exceptional girls who make headlines. But even though the health, education, and success of girls so often determines the future of a community, we don’t know more about what life is like for the ordinary girls, the ones living outside the headlines.
From the Americas to Europe to Africa to Asia to the South Pacific, the thirty teens from twenty-seven countries in Girlhood share their own stories of growing up through diary entries and photographs, and the girls’ stories are put in context with reporting and research that helps us understand the circumstances and communities they live in. This full-color, exuberantly designed volume is a portrait of ordinary girlhood around the world, and of the world, as seen through girls’ eyes.
Kids have always been activists. They have even launched movements. Long before they could vote, kids have spoken up, walked out, gone on strike, and marched for racial justice, climate protection, gun control, world peace, and more.
Kids on the March tells the stories of these protests, from the March of the Mill Children, who walked out of factories in 1903 for a shorter work week, to 1951’s Strike for a Better School, which helped build the case for Brown v. Board of Education, to the twenty-first century’s most iconic movements, including March for Our Lives, the Climate Strike, and the recent Black Lives Matter protests reshaping our nation.
Powerfully told and inspiring, Kids on the March shows how standing up, speaking out, and marching for what you believe in can advance the causes of justice, and that no one is too small or too young to make a difference.
A National Book Award finalist and instant fantasy classic about the power of community, generosity, books, and baked goods, from the author of the beloved Newbery Medal winner The Girl Who Drank the Moon.
The town of Stone in the Glen used to be lovely, but it hasn’t been so in a very long time.Once a celebrated town with a vibrant town square, prosperous businesses and families, and educated, happy children, Stone in the Glen has fallen on hard times. Since the expansive and beloved Library burned with other buildings in a time of terrible fires, the town has been plagued by droughts, blight, and destruction.
But the people have continued to put their faith in the Mayor, a dazzling fellow with a bright shock of golden hair and brilliant white teeth who promises that he alone can solve their problems. And he is a famous dragon slayer! At least, no one has ever seen a dragon in the Mayor’s presence…
But somebody is to blame for the town’s problems, not only the fires and the decline that followed them, but the child who has gone missing from the local Orphan House. And with a little helpful suggestion from the Mayor, all eyes turn to the Ogress who has come to live at the far edge of town.
Only the children of the Orphan House know the truth. Together, they must clear the Ogress’s name and solve the mystery of the town’s destruction before their home of Stone in the Glen is destroyed by its own people.
Is the sweet town of Appleton ripe for scandal?
Consider the facts:
- Appleton Elementary School has a new librarian named Rita B. Danjerous. (Say it fast.)
- Principal Noah Memree barely remembers hiring her.
- Ten-year-old Reid Durr is staying up way too late reading a book from Ms. Danjerous’s controversial “green dot” collection.
- The new school board president has mandated a student dress code that includes white gloves and bow ties available only at her shop.
Sound strange? Fret not. Appleton’s fifth-grade sleuths are following the money, embracing the punny, and determined to the get to the funniest, most rotten core of their town’s juiciest scandal. Don’t miss this seedy saga!
As featured in the Oscar-nominated Hayao Miyazaki film The Boy and the Heron: the coming-of-age novel How Do You Live? is a Japanese classic that became a New York Times bestseller.
After the death of his father, fifteen-year-old Copper must confront inevitable and enormous change, including the aftermath of his own betrayal of his best friend. Between episodes of Copper’s emerging story, letters from his uncle share knowledge and offer advice on life’s big questions. Like his namesake Copernicus, Copper looks to the stars and uses his discoveries about the heavens, earth, and human nature to answer the question of how he will live.
First published in 1937 in Japan, Genzaburō Yoshino’s How Do You Live? has long been an important book for Academy Award-winning animator Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle). Perfect for readers of philosophical fiction like The Alchemist and The Little Prince, How Do You Live? serves as a thought-provoking guide for young readers as they grow up in a world both infinitely large and unimaginably small.