Book Crush: For Kids and Teens - Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment and Interest

by Nancy Pearl

  I think one of the very best novels about the Revolutionary War for any age reader is Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes. It’s the sometimes emotionally wrenching story of a boy who is an apprentice silversmith. After a terrible accident he becomes a messenger carying secret communications between members of the Sons of Liberty during the months leading up to the American Revolution. Readers come to know many of the movers and shakers of this period, including Sam Adams and, of course, Paul Revere, all through the eyes of a young boy. (Forbes won the Pulitzer Prize for her biography of Revere and drew on her voluminous research to write this outstanding historical novel, which won the 1944 Newbery Medal.)

  Other exceptional RevolutionaryWar novels include My Brother Sam Is Dead by James and Christopher Collier (Tim Meeker has to decide where his loyalties lie—with the revolutionary Americans or the Tories); Guns for General Washington by Seymour Reit (the story of Colonel Henry Knox and his daring plan to move 183 cannons from Fort Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain three hundred miles to Boston, Massachusetts, during the winter of 1775-76); and Howard Fast’s April Morning (young Adam Cooper signs up to fight the British in 1775).

  The Boys’ War: Confederate and Union Soldiers Talk About the Civil War by Jim Murphy is based on first-person accounts of both Confederate and Union soldiers. Filled with vintage photography, it packs a real punch.

  World War II provides the background for many children’s novels. Be sure to put Code Talker by Joseph Bruchac on your list of must-reads. It tells the true story (via Ned Begay, a fictional character) of Navajo children who spent their childhoods at U.S. mission schools “erasing” all outward signs of their culture as members of the Navajo nation, only to be recruited later by the U.S. Marine Corps specifically because they were Navajos.The story starts a bit slowly but rapidly picks up pace as Ned and his fellow marines lead U.S. forces through Guam, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa.

  Two others to offer to interested readers are Snow Treasure by Marie McSwigan, based on the true story of a group of Norwegian children who smuggle nine million dollars in gold bullion right past the Nazis to the Allies, and Robert Westall’s Time of Fire.

  In A Boy at War and its sequel A Boy No More by Harry Mazer, fourteen-year-old Adam Pelko is a U.S. Navy brat whose father is stationed in Hawaii on the USS Arizona. Adam and his friends are fishing in a boat in the harbor when the first bombs begin to fall from Japanese planes. Mazer’s books introduce readers to the situation that many islanders found themselves in at a time when Hawaii was not yet a state and many of its Hawaiian and Japanese residents’ loyalties were suddenly suspect.

  Good companion reads to Mazer’s novel are Graham Salisbury’s Under the Blood-Red Sun and Eyes of the Emperor, both of which take place in Hawaii just before and during World War II. In the first book, fourteen-year-old Tomi Nakaji and his family have come to Hawaii from Japan, and Tomi just wants to be a normal American kid. But after the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor, life becomes increasingly difficult, especially after his father and grandfather are sent to internment camps. In Eyes of the Emperor, set in 1941 (and based on true events, which gives even more of a punch to this moving novel), Eddy Okubo lies about his age and enlists in the U.S. Army, but he doesn’t get sent to the battlefield; instead he and other Japanese Americans are used as bait to train dogs who will hunt and destroy Japanese combatants throughout the Pacific theaters of war.

  Four Steps to Death by John Wilson is not a particularly uplifting read, but it’s one of the few (perhaps only?) books for this age group to deal with the Russian front during WWII. The story of the strategically important battle for Stalingrad in 1942 is told from the point of view of a German tank commander, a Russian foot soldier, and a young boy whose city becomes a major battleground.

  DRAGON TALES

  Dragons, fire-breathing or not, have a long history in children’s literature. Perhaps J. R. R. Tolkien’s fabulously evil Smaug, outwitted by Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit, comes closest to the traditional concept of “dragon,” with his brilliant armor, piles of treasure, and a mesmerizing stare, but there are others to read about, too, as you can see here.

  Dragon Rider by Cornelia Funke includes out-of-the-ordinary creatures (the main ones are dragons, of course) and daring deeds by unexpected heroes.

  Dealing with Dragons is the first in the high-spirited Enchanted Forest Chronicles, by one of the best fantasy writers for children and young adults (indeed, for adults, too), Patricia C. Wrede. Witty, well-written, and featuring a dynamite pair of heroines—the indomitable, improper Princess Cimorene (but how on earth does one pronounce that?) and the dragon Kazul—this and its sequels make enchanting reading.

  In Jason Hightman’s The Saint of Dragons, the creatures are far less benign—they are, as one of the characters says,“the source of all that is rotten in the world.” And worse, they are highly evolved and walk upright, so you can’t tell who’s a dragon and who’s not.

  Illustrator Michael Hague has chosen a collection of tales featuring these fearsome beasts in The Book of Dragons, which includes selections from writers as diverse as Padraic Colum, E. Nesbit, and Elizabeth Coatsworth.

  When the main character of Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher by Bruce Coville is entrusted with a dragon’s egg, which must be hatched under the light of a full moon (sounds simple enough, right?), he learns that taking care of a baby dragon can create unexpected complications in the life of a sixth-grader.

  And if young readers are interested in every aspect of dragon lore, no matter how esoteric (or fact-based), hand them the delightfully comprehensive The Dragonology Handbook: A Practical Course in Dragons by Dugald Steer, which purports to be a facsimile of a manuscript published in the 1890s by Dr. Ernest Drake, a noted scholar and founding member of London’s Secret and Ancient Society of Dragonologists, and its companion (also really by Steer), Dragonology: The Complete Book of Dragons.

  DEWEY LOVE NONFICTION? DEWEY EVER!

  When I was a children’s librarian, back in the Dark Ages (although we did have electricity), children’s nonfiction wasn’t particularly something that book people paid a lot of attention to. Oh, there were plenty of books on different topics available for reports, but that’s pretty much all they were being written for—to help someone with his or her homework. (Another difference was that the kids didn’t get assigned that much homework, or at least not nearly as much as today’s kids, and the homework assignments usually didn’t begin until the upper elementary grades.) I don’t remember being excited about a children’s book of nonfiction, ever. But all that’s changed in the last decade or so. What parents, librarians, and teachers find now is that many of the best books for kids are nonfiction. And using these books is often the best way to get nonreaders reading, because you can always find books that fall into the category of what the child is interested in. Sports? Try the 700s. Creepy crawlies or dinosaurs? Take a look at the 500s.Want to share some funny poems with your kids? Try the books described in the 800s.Visiting New York City? You’ll find lots of quality stuff in the 900s.

  The titles in this section range in suitability for first- through sixth- or seventh-graders, but most are appropriate for eight- to twelve-year-olds. I think that, in general, older kids can certainly use adult books, although there’s not the quantity of quality nonfiction there that you’ll discover in the children’s departments of libraries and bookstores.

  100s

  Bryan Magee’s The Story of Philosophy is just what its subtitle states:“The essential guide to the history of Western philosophy.” It includes philosophical theories and great thinkers from the ancient Greeks to the late twentieth century, and is well-illustrated, authoritative, and fascinating reading for children and adults alike.

  200s

  Mary Pope Osborne’s One World, Many Religions incorporates photos of children worshipping in the traditions of the major religions, including Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism (all religions with a written tradition) in this out
standingly informative overview that also includes a timeline and a useful glossary.

  Celebrating Ramadan with text by Diane Hoyt-Goldsmith and photos by Lawrence Migdale, and Ramadan, written by Suhaib Hamid Ghazi with evocative illustrations by Omar Rayyan, both use the experiences of a young boy to introduce young readers to Islam and the Muslim month of prayer and fasting. One nice sidelight of Goldsmith’s book is the way it shows that Islam is a worldwide religion, with some of the family’s relatives coming from Egypt, and others from Bosnia.

  300s

  In Fireboat:The Heroic Adventures of the John J. Harvey, Maira Kalman links the year 1931—when the John J. Harvey, one of twelve fireboats in New York City, was first launched—to September 11, 2001, when the little boat came out of retirement to fight the fires following the disaster at the Twin Towers.

  Fantasy fans (or those addicted to horror novels) won’t want to miss Judy Sierra’s The Gruesome Guide to World Monsters, and The Essential Worldwide Monster Guide by Linda Ashman, both of which offer spine-tingling descriptions of ghoulies, ghosties, long-legged beasties, and things that go bump in the night.

  There are two very cool aspects of The Shipwrecked Sailor by Tamara Bower: It’s based on a story found on a papyrus scroll now in the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia, which scholars believe dates from the nineteenth century BCE, and Bower has included hieroglyphs from the original papyrus, along with their literal meanings, so readers can actually get a sense of what this ancient writing looks like. She also includes a bibliography of titles (mainly aimed at adult readers, unfortunately) in case readers want to explore the subject further.

  It’s instructive to read about how an election works from beginning to end, from campaigning to recounts, in Vote! by Eileen Christelow. Or at least how it should ideally work.

  Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story About Brain Science by John Fleischmann unravels the mysteries of the brain by describing the situation of a mid-nineteeth-century man who lived for eleven years after a thirteen-pound iron rod was shot through his brain; although he could function normally, his personality changed a lot.

  Virginia Hamilton wrote, and Leo and Diane Dillon illustrated, The People Could Fly: American Black Folktales, a collection of stories that were first told by slaves and have remained part of African American history and culture to this day.

  The twenty women profiled in Kathleen Krull’s Lives of Extraordinary Women: Rulers, Rebels (and What the Neighbors Thought) include Indira Gandhi, Queen Victoria, Marie Antoinette, Harriet Tubman, Wilma Mankiller, and Eva Perón, among others. The writing is lively and the information is useful both for school reports and as a stepping stone to further reading.

  Eric A. Kimmel retells a Jewish legend about Rosh Hashannah, the Jewish New Year, in Gershon’s Monster, illustrated by Jon J Muth.

  Jacqueline Mitton is a Fellow of Britain’s Royal Astronomical Society (and has an asteroid named after her and her husband), so she’s well qualified to write Zodiac: Celestial Circle of the Sun, explaining the myths surrounding each of the twelve zodiac constellations; it’s sumptuously illustrated by Christina Balit.

  The journey of immigrants to America is detailed in Shutting Out the Sky: Life in the Tenements of New York, 1880-1915, in which Deborah Hopkinson uses archival photographs and actual diary entries to tell the story of five immigrants, representative of the twenty-three million people who came to America from all over the world during those years.

  400s

  WordPlay Café, written and illustrated Michael Kline, is filled with, as the subtitle has it, “Cool Codes, Priceless Punzles & Phantastic Phonetic Phun,” from “amazing grapes” to “inflated language,” and including, in Chapter Fore: Deep-Fried Diction for Two (Or More!). Lots of fun.

  Most kids love codes, and James Rumford’s Seeker of Knowledge: The Man Who Deciphered Egyptian Hieroglyphs tells the story of Jean-François Champollion, the Frenchman who figured out the key to the Rosetta stone (which is on display in the British Museum).

  500s

  Don’t miss Robert Sabuda’s incredible pop-up books, Encyclopedia Prehistorica: Dinosaurs and Encyclopedia Prehistorica: Sharks and Other Sea Monsters.(See the“Christmas Is Coming!” section in Part I for more examples of Sabuda’s marvelous work.)

  The Voyager’s Stone: The Adventures of a Message-Carrying Bottle Adrift on the Ocean Sea by Robert Kraske uses a story format to explain different aspects of oceanography, including tides, the current, and the many denizens of the deep.

  Susan E.Goodman’s text and photographs by Dorothy Handelman strikingly demonstrate how inventions (like umbrellas or camouflage clothing) have been borrowed from nature in Nature Did It First!

  If only every kid could have Ms. Frizzle for a science teacher—using the Magic School Bus, she helps the students in her class explore various topics in books such as The Magic School Bus at the Waterworks, The Magic School Bus Inside the Earth, The Magic School Bus Inside the Human Body, The Magic School Bus on the Ocean Floor, The Magic School Bus Lost in the Solar System (my personal favorite), and The Magic School Bus in the Time of the Dinosaurs. One of the best things about these books by Joanna Cole is that kids tend to love them, although I know at least one mother who confessed how tired she got as she read them all out loud to each one of her three sons. (Some of these are shelved in the 500s, and some in the 600s, depending on the subject. I’ve put them all here in the 500s for convenience.)

  In April Pulley Sayre’s Secrets of Sound: Studying the Calls and Songs of Whales, Elephants, and Birds, readers learn about the work that three acoustic biologists perform through following their research from beginning to end.

  Bob Barner’s Dem Bones combines the well-known song (“Toe bone connected to da foot bone”) with factual information about our bone structure. Did you know there are twenty-two bones in your feet and a built-in arch support? I didn’t, until I read this helpful and amusingly illustrated (with skeletons, of course) book.

  Life on Earth: The Story of Evolution by Steve Jenkins uses a combination of instructive text and lively illustrations to provide a basic introduction to evolutionary science. One of the most interesting parts of the book is a timeline showing the history of the Earth as a single day—Earth is formed at 12:00 a.m., life appears at 4:47 a.m., the first dinosaurs and other mammals don’t evolve until 10:42 p.m., and humans don’t show up on the scene until 11:58:30 p.m.—four and a half billion years or almost twenty-four hours later.

  G is for Googol: A Math Alphabet Book by David M. Schwartz explains twenty-six mathematical terms, from abacus to zillion, in language that certainly children (and even the most math-challenged adult) will find comprehendible.

  The 500s are where you find the books about animals, so it’s a very popular area for kids to browse through. Here are some choices to check out: Growing Frogs by Vivian French (who can make even the yucky parts interesting to someone who’s not particularly a huge frog lover, as I still am not); Grandma Elephant’s In Charge by Martin Jenkins (and illustrated by Ivan Bates), which explores life in an African elephant herd, where grandma’s rule is absolute.

  Owen & Mzee: The True Story of a Remarkable Friendship describes the loving relationship between a baby hippopotamus and a giant tortoise 130 years old that arose following the devastating tsunami in Southeast Asia, told by Isabella and Craig Hatkoff, along with Dr. Paula Kahumbu (who is the director of the sanctuary where the friends now reside), and photographs by Peter Greste.

  600s

  Eight cool cats explain the process of creating a book from the author’s first ideas to the finished product in the hands of the excited reader (with many stops in between) in How a Book Is Made by the incomparable Aliki. (I found this description very useful in understanding what was happening to my books after I sent them off to the publisher.)

  David Macauley’s The New Way Things Work: From Levers to Lasers, Windmills to Web Sites, a Visual Guide to the World of Machines is really a book for adults, but it�
�s useful for kids who want to know everything about, say, metal detectors, or why self-winding watches really do keep on ticking. No comprehensive list of nonfiction for readers of all ages is complete without it.

  Another book filled with up-to-date topics is Transformed: How Everyday Things Are Made by Bill Slavin, which describes what goes into making everything from blue jeans to tea to wax candles and cola drinks. (Believe me, if your child has dreams of winning a lot of money on a quiz show, he or she can’t do better than study Macauley’s and Slavin’s books—together, they’re pretty comprehensive.)

  Patrick O’Brien offers lots of interesting tidbits of information in The Hindenburg.The zeppelins, before one exploded in 1937 in the sky over New Jersey, had a glorious history of flight for more than thirty-five years. (It’s books like this that convince me that if you want to know the basics about almost any topic, your first step should be a children’s book on the subject.)