Books to Browse
Leafing through books in a bookstore is still the most enjoyable way to buy a book. Unfortunately, not every one has time to do that. Even more unfortunately, some of these beautiful books may be hard to find in your local bookstores. We hope this list helps. If you follow these links, you will find even more books than are listed here.
We have added more new books, so please check it out
Every time somebody makes a suggestion for a new book, we try to add it - but I have not had time to add them to the spreadsheet, for those of you who asked. Basketball season has started. We also found out about Better World Books so we added this link to their store. You can check out their site, find about more about what they are doing, and support them by buying books from their store. We picked Amazon because their pages load quickly and so many people have Amazon accounts. But we also encourage everybody to shop at their local bookstores. Ravenous Reader on Folly Road and Blue Bicycle Books on King Street are both local bookstores that feature a lot of the books we are recommending. ( We could not find a website for Ravenous Reader but we did find photos of the owner, Pat Giacinto, and reading events at Ravenous Reader on the Trident Literacy Association's website, so that's what we linked!)
PreReaders: 3s, 4s and 5s
This is the hard part - sorting the titles. Because it depends on whether we are talking about reading by yourself, being read to by someone else, or reading to your baby brother - and young children need lots of it all. These books all have a lot of color and rhythm, but please don't feel constrained. There is a lot of overlap.
Click the heading for the full list.
Click the heading for the full list.
Early Readers: 4 - 8
This beautiful book is about a chef, Edna Lewis. There are books about York, who traveled with Lewis and Clark, Muhammad Ali, Michelle and Barack Obama, Augusta Savage, Jesse Owens, the Chevalier de Saint George, Art Tatum, Louis Armstrong. There are beautifully retold African Folk Tales and retellings of other fairy tales (See Brothers of the Knight). And lots of everyday family stories about what we all go through.
Click the heading for the full list.
Click the heading for the full list.
PreTeen Readers: 9 - 12
This book is illustrated by Kadir Nelson, who also illustrated Please Baby Please. The paintings are beautiful. Nelson has illustrated dozens of beautiful books. We have added links to authors and illustrators on the Links We Like page, in case you would like to search further for them by name.
Click the heading for the full list.
Click the heading for the full list.
The Whole List
Our list is by no means all inclusive, but we hope it will be a resource to parents, educators and booksellers. All of these titles have been vetted by Kim Livingston, the media director at James Simons Elementary. It's in a three page excel workbook, so you can sort it to your own needs, add your own notes, and add other titles as you find them. We tried to add it to the site, but apparently that is a "pro" feature. If you email us, we'll be glad to send it to you. There are also links to more books in the Links We Like. You can email Kim Livingston, if you have a question about whether a specific book would be age appropriate.