Back to School!
Here are some books for kids going back to school — or maybe going to school for the very first time!
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Search Results for: X
Favorite Halloween Stories for Younger Children
Clifford’s Halloween
Summary:Clifford is an enormous red dog who dressed as a ghost last Halloween. What will his costume be this year?
Scary, scary Halloween
Summary:A band of trick-or-treaters and a mother cat and her kittens spend a very scary Halloween.
Happy Halloween, Biscuit!
Summary:The yellow puppy and the little girl find a pumpkin, try on costumes, and go trick-or-treating on his first Halloween.
Harriet’s Halloween candy
Summary:Harriet learns the hard way that sharing her Halloween candy makes her feel much better than eating it all herself.
It’s pumpkin time!
Summary:A sister and brother plant and tend their own pumpkin patch so they will have jack-o-lanterns for Halloween.
Corduroy’s Halloween
Summary:Corduroy loves Halloween. Lift the flaps and share his holiday fun! Corduroy has lots to do to get ready. He visits the pumpkin patch and finds a perfect pumpkin. He goes to the store to get everything he needs for his Halloween costume. And he decorates the house and puts out treats for all the trick-or-treaters who will knock on his door. Join in the excitement of Halloween with this holiday tale perfect for even the youngest reader.
Arthur’s Halloween costume : story and pictures
Summary:Arthur the chimpanzee, after worrying that his Halloween costume won’t be scary enough, wins a prize for the most original costume in the school.
Pumpkin Jack
Summary:In the course of one year, a jack-o-lantern, discarded after Halloween, decomposes in the backyard and eventually grows new pumpkins from its seeds.
Horrible Harry at Halloween
Summary:The students in Miss Mackle’s third-grade class enjoy a day of Halloween surprises, including Harry’s unusual costume.
Froggy’s Halloween
Summary:Froggy tries to find just the right costume for Halloween and although his trick-or-treating does not go as he had planned, he enjoys himself anyway.
The grandmas trick-or-treat
Summary:Pip’s two grandmothers, who cannot agree on anything, take Pip and her friends trick-or-treating on Halloween.
The Hallo-wiener
Summary:All the other dogs make fun of Oscar the dachshund until one Halloween when, dressed as a hot dog, Oscar bravely rescues the others.
Halloween mice!
Summary:Mice whirling and skipping on Halloween night are threatened by an approaching cat, until they come up with a scary trick to defend themselves.
Happy Halloween, great pumpkin!
Summary:Every year Linus tries to convince the Peanuts gang that the Great Pumpkin will rise up out of the pumpkin patch and bring gifts to children everywhere. Is this the year?–Cover.
Sheep trick or treat
Summary:When sheep dress up to go trick-or-treating at a nearby farm, their costumes scare away some wolves lurking in the woods.
Big pumpkin
Summary:A witch trying to pick a big pumpkin on Halloween discovers the value of cooperation when she gets help from a series of monsters.
Mouse’s first Halloween
Summary:"One spooky night in the fall, Mouse creeps out and hears bats flying flit! flit! flit! and apples dropping plop! plop! plop! and children singing ‘trick or treat!’ What could it be?"
Boo! It’s Halloween
Summary:A family gets ready for Halloween, preparing costumes, making goodies for the school party, and carving jack-o’lanterns. Halloween jokes and rhymes are interspersed throughout the text.
Read more “Favorite Halloween Stories for Younger Children” » Read more
Remembering Dorothea Benton Frank, 1951-2019
Dorothea Benton Frank, author of the bestselling Lowcountry series and other novels set in South Carolina, died on September 2, 2019. Here are some of her most popular books, linked to the library catalog to make it easy to find and request them.
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Hispanic Heritage Month Chapter Books
Hispanic Heritage Month is celebrated from September 15 through October 15. Here are some recommended chapter books for elementary school that feature characters with a Hispanic heritage.
Sarai and the meaning of awesome
Summary:"Fourth grader Sarai Gonzalez can do anything. She can bake, dance, and run her own cupcake business. But when Sarai’s grandparents are forced to move, even Sarai’s not sure what to do. So she hatches a super-awesome plan with her younger sisters and cousin to buy back the house. But houses are more expensive than she ever thought, her sisters won’t listen, and she’s running out of time. Will Sarai find a way to save the day?"
Marcus Vega doesn’t speak Spanish
Summary:After a fight at school leaves Marcus facing suspension, Marcus’s mother takes him and his younger brother, who has Down syndrome, to Puerto Rico to visit relatives they do not remember or have never met, and while there Marcus starts searching for his father, who left their family ten years ago and is somewhere on the island.
The moon within
Summary:"Eleven-year-old (nearly twelve) Celi Rivera, who is a mix of Black-Puerto Rican-Indigenous Mexican is secretive about her approaching period, and the changes that are happening to her body; she is horrified that her mother wants to hold a traditional public moon ceremony to celebrate the occasion; she must choose loyalty to her life-long best friend who is contemplating an even more profound change of life or the boy she likes"
Hotel dare
Summary:"Olive and her adopted siblings, Darwin and Charlotte, are spending the summer with their estranged grandma at her creepy hotel and it’s all work and no play. They’re stuck inside doing boring chores but they soon stumble upon an incredible secret… The simple turn of a knob transports them to a distant magical world filled with space pirates. Behind the next door are bearded wizards. Down the hall is a doorway to a cotton-candied kingdom. But once the doors are opened, worlds start colliding, and only one family can save them before they tear themselves apart."
Flor and Miranda steal the show
Summary:"When Flor finds out that Miranda and her band could potentially put her family’s petting zoo out of business, she forms a plan to keep Miranda from an important performance that night"
A dash of trouble
Summary:Wanting to be a part of her family’s Dia de los Muertos preparations, Leonora sneaks out of school to discover her mother, aunt, and older sisters have been keeping a secret.
Nothing up my sleeve
Summary:When best friends Dominic, Loop, and Z stumble upon the new magic shop in town, they know just how they will spend their summer vacation–mastering cool tricks so they can gain further access into the secret world of magic.
Forest world
Summary:Sent to Cuba to visit the father he barely knows, Edver is surprised to meet a half-sister, Luza, whose plan to lure their cryptozoologist mother into coming there, too, turns dangerous.
Recommended Reading for D-Day
On June 6, 1944, the Allied invasion of Western Europe began when more than 160,000 Allied troops under the command of General Dwight D. Eisenhower landed along the heavily-fortified French coastline, to fight Nazi Germany on the beaches of Normandy.
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NOBLE Book Awards 2018: Children’s Fiction
First place
Sunny
Sunny, the Defenders’ best runner, only runs for his father, who blames Sunny for his mother’s death, but with his coach’s help Sunny finds a way to combine track and field with his true passion, dancing.
Runners-up
Louisiana’s way home
When Louisiana Elefante’s granny wakes her up in the middle of the night to tell her that the day of reckoning has arrived and they have to leave home immediately, Louisiana isn’t overly worried. After all, Granny has many middle-of-the-night ideas. But this time, things are different. This time, Granny intends for them never to return. Separated from her best friends, Raymie and Beverly, Louisiana struggles to oppose the winds of fate (and Granny) and find a way home. But as Louisiana’s life becomes entwined with the lives of the people of a small Georgia town — including a surly motel owner, a walrus-like minister, and a mysterious boy with a crow on his shoulder — she starts to worry that she is destined only for good-byes. (Which could be due to the curse on Louisiana’s and Granny’s heads. But that is a story for another time.) — from Amazon.
Front desk
Recent immigrants from China and desperate for work and money, ten-year-old Mia Tang’s parents take a job managing a rundown motel in Southern California, even though the owner, Mr. Yao is a nasty skinflint who exploits them; while her mother (who was an engineer in China) does the cleaning, Mia works the front desk and tries to cope with demanding customers and other recent immigrants–not to mention being only one of two Chinese in her fifth grade class, the other being Mr. Yao’s son, Jason.
Other nominees
The wild robot escapes
Summary:After being captured by the Recons and returned to civilization for reprogramming, Roz is sent to Hilltop Farm where she befriends her owner’s family and animals, but pines for her son, Brightbill.
Aru Shah and the end of time
Summary:Twelve-year-old Aru stretches the truth to fit in at her private school, but when she is dared to prove an ancient lamp is cursed, she inadvertently frees an ancient demon.
The night diary
Summary:Shy twelve-year-old Nisha, forced to flee her home with her Hindu family during the 1947 partition of India, tries to find her voice and make sense of the world falling apart around her by writing to her deceased Muslim mother in the pages of her diary.
Merci Suárez changes gears
Summary:Merci Suárez begins the sixth grade and knows things will change, but she did not count on her grandfather acting strangely, not fitting in at her private school, and dealing with Edna Santos’ jealousy.
Ghost boys
Summary:"After seventh-grader Jerome is shot by a white police officer, he observes the aftermath of his death and meets the ghosts of other fallen black boys including historical figure Emmett Till"–
City of ghosts
Summary:Ever since her near-fatal drowning, Cassidy has been able to pull back the "Veil" that separates the living from the dead and see ghosts, not that she wants to, and she was really looking forward to a ghost-free summer at the beach; however her parents are going to start filming a TV series about the world’s most haunted places, starting with Edinburgh with its graveyards, castles, and restless phantoms–and Cass and her personal ghost companion, Jacob, are about to find out that a city of old ghosts can be a very dangerous place indeed.
Read more “NOBLE Book Awards 2018: Children’s Fiction” » Read more
NOBLE Book Awards 2018: Poetry
First place
Can I touch your hair? : poems of race, mistakes, and friendship
Irene Latham, who is white, and Charles Waters, who is black, present paired poems about topics including family dinners, sports, recess, and much more. This relatable collection explores different experiences of race in America.
Runners-up
For every one
"”Originally performed at the Kennedy Center for the unveiling of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, and later as a tribute to Walter Dean Myers, this stirring and inspirational poem is New York Times bestselling author and National Book Award finalist Jason Reynolds’s rallying cry to the dreamers of the world. Jump Anyway is for kids who dream. Kids who dream of being better than they are. Kids who dream of doing more than they almost dare to dream. Kids who are like Jason, a self-professed dreamer. In it, Jason does not claim to know how to make dreams come true; he has, in fact, been fighting on the front line of his own battle to make his own dreams a reality. He expected to make it when he was sixteen. He inched that number up to eighteen, then twenty-five years old..Now, some of those expectations have been realized. But others, the most important ones, lay ahead, and a lot of them involve kids, how to inspire them. All the kids who are scared to dream, or don’t know how to dream, or don’t dare to dream because they’ve NEVER seen a dream come true. Jason wants kids to know that dreams take time. They involve countless struggles. But no matter how many times a dreamer gets beat down, the drive and the passion and the hope never fully extinguish–because just having the dream is the start you need, or you won’t get anywhere anyway, and that is when you have to take a leap of faith and…jump anyway” ; “An inspirational letter written to the dreamers of the world”"
Wade in the water : poems
A Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, using her signature voice–inquisitive, lyrical and wry–mulls over what it means to be a citizen, a mother and an artist in a culture arbitrated by wealth, men and violence, boldly tying America’s modern moment both to our nation’s fraught founding history and to a sense of the spirit, the everlasting.
Other nominees
Sing a song of seasons : a nature poem for each day of the year
Summary:Contains 366 nature poems–one for every day of the year. Filled with familliar favorites and new discoveries by a vast array of poets, including Langston Hughes, Lilian Moore, Emily Dickinson, Jack Prelutsky, William Shakespeare, N.M. Bodecker, Kanoko Okamoto, and many more.
Summary:Contains 366 nature poems–one for every day of the year. Filled with familliar favorites and new discoveries by a vast array of poets, including Langston Hughes, Lilian Moore, Emily Dickinson, Jack Prelutsky, William Shakespeare, N.M. Bodecker, Kanoko Okamoto, and many more.
Honeybee : poems
Summary:Following the course of a little more than a year, the poems chronicle the on-again off-again process of letting go.
Virgin : poems
Summary:"Selected by Ross Gay as winner of the inaugural Jake Adam York Prize, Analicia Sotelo’s debut collection of poems is a vivid portrait of the artist as a young woman"–Provided by publisher.
Seeing into tomorrow : haiku by Richard Wright
Summary:From watching a sunset to finding a beetle, Richard Wright’s haiku puts everyday moments into focus. Paired with the photo-collage artwork of Nina Crews, Seeing into Tomorrow celebrates the lives of contemporary African American boys.
Read more “NOBLE Book Awards 2018: Poetry” » Read more
NOBLE Book Awards 2018: Children’s Nonfiction
First place
Hidden figures : the untold true story of four African-American women who helped launch our nation into space
Before John Glenn orbited the Earth or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of professionals worked as "Human Computers," calculating the flight paths that would enable these historic achievements. Among these were a coterie of bright, talented African-American women. Segregated from their white counterparts by Jim Crow laws, these "colored computers," as they were known, used slide rules, adding machines, and pencil and paper to support America’s fledgling aeronautics industry, and helped write the equations that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space. Drawing on the oral histories of scores of these "computers," personal recollections, interviews with NASA executives and engineers, archival documents, correspondence, and reporting from the era, Hidden Figures recalls America’s greatest adventure and NASA’s groundbreaking successes through the experiences of five spunky, courageous, intelligent, determined, and patriotic women: Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, Christine Darden, and Gloria Champine. Moving from World War II through NASA’s golden age, touching on the civil rights era, the Space Race, the Cold War, and the women’s rights movement, Hidden Figures interweaves a history of scientific achievement and technological innovation with the intimate stories of five women whose work forever changed the world — and whose lives show how out of one of America’s most painful histories came one of its proudest moments.
Runners-up
Dreamers
"An illustrated picture book autobiography in which award-winning author Yuyi Morales tells her own immigration story"–
Lights!, camera!, Alice! : the thrilling true adventures of the first woman filmmaker
Meet Alice Guy-Blaché. She made movies–some of the very first movies, and some of the most exciting! Blow up a pirate ship? Why not? Crawl into a tiger’s cage? Of course! Leap off a bridge onto a real speeding train? It will be easy! Driven by her passion for storytelling, Alice saw a potential for film that others had not seen before, allowing her to develop new narratives, new camera angles, new techniques, and to surprise her audiences again and again. With daring and vision, Alice Guy-Blaché introduced the world to a thrilling frontier of imagination and adventure, and became one of filmmaking’s first and greatest innovators.
Other nominees
No small potatoes : Junius G. Groves and his kingdom in Kansas
Summary:"The life of Junius G. Groves, a sharecropper in Kansas who grew a modest potato farm into a potato kingdom."–
Not my idea : a book about whiteness
Summary:A young white girl, with the help of her mother, struggles to understand the whys and hows of racism and white supremecy and its long history in the United States, as well as the efforts to combat it.
A history of pictures for children : from cave paintings to computer drawings
Summary:A History of Pictures takes young readers on an adventure through art history. From cave paintings to video games, this book shows how and why pictures have been made, linking art to the human experience. Hockney and Gayford explain each piece of art in the book, helping young minds to grasp difficult concepts. The book tracks the many twists and turns toward artistic invention, allowing readers to fully appreciate how and why art has changed and includes an illustrated timeline of inventions. All new illustrations by Rose Blake add a personal perspective on a wide variety of images. A History of Pictures will inspire creative minds and help them to understand the legacy of the pictures we see today.
Libba : the magnificent musical life of Elizabeth Cotten
Summary:Elizabeth Cotten was only a little girl when she picked up a guitar for the first time. It wasn’t hers (it was her big brother’s), and it wasn’t strung right for her (she was left-handed). But she flipped that guitar upside down and backwards and taught herself how to play it anyway. By age eleven, she’d written "Freight Train," one of the most famous folk songs of the twentieth century. And by the end of her life, people everywhere from the sunny beaches of California to the rolling hills of England knew her music.
Read more “NOBLE Book Awards 2018: Children’s Nonfiction” » Read more
NOBLE Book Awards 2018: Children’s Graphic Novels
First place
Unicorn of many hats : another Phoebe and her unicorn advenures
Phoebe and her exceptional hooved pal are back in this all-new collection of comics! Laugh alongside the lovable duo as they question the idea of "coolness," gain a deeper appreciation for the power of friendship, and put off summer reading assignments for as long as physically possible.
Unicorn of many hats : another Phoebe and her unicorn advenures
Phoebe and her exceptional hooved pal are back in this all-new collection of comics! Laugh alongside the lovable duo as they question the idea of "coolness," gain a deeper appreciation for the power of friendship, and put off summer reading assignments for as long as physically possible.
Runners-up
Dog Man : lord of the fleas
When a new bunch of baddies bust up the town, Dog Man is called into action — and this time he isn’t alone. With a cute kitten and a remarkable robot by his side, our heroes must save the day by joining forces with an unlikely ally: Petey, the World’s Most Evil Cat. But can the villainous Petey avoid vengeance and venture into virtue?
Baby Monkey, private eye
Baby Monkey, private eye, will investigate stolen jewels, missing pizzas, and other mysteries–if he can manage to figure out how to put his pants on.
Other nominee
The cardboard kingdom
Summary:Welcome to a neighborhood of kids who transform ordinary boxes into colorful costumes. and their ordinary block into cardboard kingdom. This is the summer when sixteen kids encounter knights and rogues, robots and monsters-and their own inner demons-on one last quest before school starts again. In the Cardboard Kingdom, you can be anything you want to be-imagine that–Provided by publisher.,Follows the adventures of a group of neighborhood children who make costumes from cardboard and use their imagination to create adventures with knights, robots, and monsters.
Read more “NOBLE Book Awards 2018: Children’s Graphic Novels” » Read more
NOBLE Book Awards 2018: Children’s Picture Books
First place
Julián is a mermaid
While riding the subway home from the pool with his abuela one day, Julián notices three women spectacularly dressed up. Their hair billows in brilliant hues, their dresses end in fishtails, and their joy fills the train car. When Julián gets home, daydreaming of the magic he’s seen, all he can think about is dressing up just like the ladies in his own fabulous mermaid costume: a butter-yellow curtain for his tail, the fronds of a potted fern for his headdress. But what will Abuela think about the mess he makes — and even more importantly, what will she think about how Julián sees himself?
Julián is a mermaid
While riding the subway home from the pool with his abuela one day, Julián notices three women spectacularly dressed up. Their hair billows in brilliant hues, their dresses end in fishtails, and their joy fills the train car. When Julián gets home, daydreaming of the magic he’s seen, all he can think about is dressing up just like the ladies in his own fabulous mermaid costume: a butter-yellow curtain for his tail, the fronds of a potted fern for his headdress. But what will Abuela think about the mess he makes — and even more importantly, what will she think about how Julián sees himself?
Runners-up
We don’t eat our classmates!
When the class pet bites the finger of Penelope, a tyrannosaurus rex, she finally understands why she should not eat her classmates, no matter how tasty they are.
Square
When his friend Circle asks him to do her portrait after praising him as a sculptor and genius, Square struggles to carve her likeness from a stone block.
Other nominees
No small potatoes : Junius G. Groves and his kingdom in Kansas
Summary:"The life of Junius G. Groves, a sharecropper in Kansas who grew a modest potato farm into a potato kingdom."–
Not my idea : a book about whiteness
Summary:A young white girl, with the help of her mother, struggles to understand the whys and hows of racism and white supremecy and its long history in the United States, as well as the efforts to combat it.
A history of pictures for children : from cave paintings to computer drawings
Summary:A History of Pictures takes young readers on an adventure through art history. From cave paintings to video games, this book shows how and why pictures have been made, linking art to the human experience. Hockney and Gayford explain each piece of art in the book, helping young minds to grasp difficult concepts. The book tracks the many twists and turns toward artistic invention, allowing readers to fully appreciate how and why art has changed and includes an illustrated timeline of inventions. All new illustrations by Rose Blake add a personal perspective on a wide variety of images. A History of Pictures will inspire creative minds and help them to understand the legacy of the pictures we see today.
Libba : the magnificent musical life of Elizabeth Cotten
Summary:Elizabeth Cotten was only a little girl when she picked up a guitar for the first time. It wasn’t hers (it was her big brother’s), and it wasn’t strung right for her (she was left-handed). But she flipped that guitar upside down and backwards and taught herself how to play it anyway. By age eleven, she’d written "Freight Train," one of the most famous folk songs of the twentieth century. And by the end of her life, people everywhere from the sunny beaches of California to the rolling hills of England knew her music.
Read more “NOBLE Book Awards 2018: Children’s Picture Books” » Read more