Grades K-2
This picture book celebrates friendship in a unique way – by using shapes as the characters who are friends. They play together, help each other during good times and bad, and they fight with each other, but they don’t stay mad for long. This book teaches kids that it’s nice to have a few good friends.
Grades 9-12
Henry Denton is going through a lot. His brother is a college dropout whose girlfriend is pregnant, his grandmother is slowly succumbing to Alzheimer’s, his boyfriend committed suicide last year, and his mother is struggling to keep everything together. in addition, Henry was abducted by aliens when he was thirteen and he has to choose whether or not the world is worth saving. He is having trouble making a decision when he meets Diego who makes Henry question who he is becoming. Can Henry save his own life along with everyone else’s?
Grades 5-8
Former first daughter Chelsea Clinton presents and explains today’s toughest challenges we face in today’s world for young readers. This includes poverty, hunger, education, gender equality and climate change. She cites various statistics and provides resources for kids to get involved in order to quell these challenges. This is a great book for kids to understand what’s going on in the world around them and motivates them to do something about it.
Ages 16+
The Carol Burnett Show is chronicled in this hilarious memoir by none other than Carol herself. She highlights her favorite scenes and those she worked with on set. Guest stars on the show included Lucille Ball, Bernadette Peters, Betty Grable and Rita Hayworth. I highly recommend this book to fans of Carol Burnett and her show!
Ages 18+
Psychiatrist Dr. Lisa Damour has created a guide for parents with daughters so that they can help their teen develop into a well-rounded adult. She gives realistic examples of trials parents have gone through with their daughters, which serve as excellent examples of how to deal with teens on a day-to-day basis. The book is broken up into seven parts, including: Parting with Childhood, Contending with Adult Authority, Entering the Romantic World, and Caring for Herself. The aim of the book is to help parents understand and guide their daughters from adolescence to adulthood.
Ages 18+
Mike Massimino has dreamt of becoming an astronaut since the day Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. Massimino grew up on Long Island, and attended both Columbia University and MIT. He took qualifying exams and was rejected twice by NASA, but he didn’t give up. On the final round of astronaut selection, he failed because of poor eyesight, but he didn’t stop there, either. He makes it to space and has the ride of his life. His memoir teaches us that when you persevere, anything is possible.
Grades 9-12
Felicia Day is a filmmaker, actress, musician, and self-proclaimed geek who found herself as an Internet entrepreneur after years of being home schooled and isolated. She moved to Hollywood to become an actress, but her misadventures led her to produce her own web series, own her own production company and become an Internet star. In this charming and funny memoir, Day shares her story and inspires us all to pursue our wildest dreams.
Grades 3-5
Patterson and Grabenstein team up once again and bring young readers a story about a small mouse with a big personality. Isaiah is a special kind of mouse: he can read, write and talk to humans, too! When he is separated from his very large family, he relies on the friendships that he makes along the way to get him through this tough time. The most special friend he makes is an equally lonely human girl named Hailey, and the two become inseparable. Will Isaiah be able to reconnect with his family or will they be gone for good?
Grades 3-6
Misuzu Kaneko was a children’s poet in the early 1900s whose work was quickly forgotten after her premature death. Now, years later, it is rediscovered in the wake of the devastating tsunami of 2011. Jacobson brings her poems back to life in this book after connecting with Kaneko’s brother, and they are presented in Japanese and English.
Ages 18+
This book is the encouraging story of how Nadia Lopez, a life long educator, opened and became the principal of her own Brooklyn school. She was inspired by her students to create the school, and suddenly found herself in the national spotlight while she met with President Obama and the beneficiary behind a campaign to fund the school. All it took was one post on the popular site Humans of New York for her to get noticed. This book is the story of how Mott Hall Bridges Academy came to be.
