Recommended Reading for Read Across America Day 2020
Babies Jane Foster’s Black and White by Jane Foster This high-contrast board book will appeal to babies learning to explore their new world. I’m Going to Preschool by Marion Cocklico Prep your little one for preschool with a book that peeks into an average school day. Mary Had a Little Lamb: A Colors Book by […]
Babies
Jane Foster’s Black and White by Jane Foster
This high-contrast board book will appeal to babies learning to explore their new world.
I’m Going to Preschool by Marion Cocklico
Prep your little one for preschool with a book that peeks into an average school day.
Mary Had a Little Lamb: A Colors Book by Jarvis
The classic nursery rhyme with a twist: a colorful group of animals follow Mary and her lamb, including a tiger and hippo!
Play! Play! Play! by Douglas Florian
Join in on a playdate adventure that takes you through a game of hide-n-seek and having fun with various toys.
Let’s Go Ted by Sophy Henn
Ted uses his imagination to go on a wild adventure – with his cardboard box.
People Don’t Bite People by Lisa Wheeler
Have your child learn about the do’s and don’t’s of behavior in this quirky read-aloud.
Toddlers
Julián is a Mermaid by Jessica Love
Julián begins to craft a mermaid costume to wear, taking inspiration from mermaids in a New York subway.
Izzy Gizmo by Pip Jones
Izzy, a creative inventor, comes across an injured crow while playing one day and decides to invent a prosthetic for the bird.
Islandborn by Junot Díaz
By asking around her neighborhood, Lola travels back to the island through storytelling and experiences the music, food, and hardships.
Rosie & Crayon by Deborah Marcero
When Rosie’s dog, Crayon, leaves, she can
only see in black & white. As she walks around their favorite spots to play, she relives memories of Crayon, & sees color again.
King Alice by Matthew Cordell
Alice’s father is subjected to King Alice’s demands such as making a book, fighting unicorns, and…a fairy sleepover!
Youth
The Cardboard Kingdom by Chad Sell
The summer before schools starts, a group of neighborhood kids have a last hurrah with an empire filled with dragons, castles, and sorcerers – all made of cardboard.
The Last Last-Day-Of-Summer by Lamar Giles
The last day of summer arrives, and cousins Otto and Sheed are trying to make the best of it. A stranger gives them a polaroid camera that suddenly freezes everything, including their grandma and bikes. As they try to unstick everything, the last day of summer turns into the longest
day of their lives.
Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes
The 12-year-old narrator, Jerome, is killed by a cop for playing with a toy gun after being bullied at school. As a ghost, he watches over his family and encounters other ghost boys.
The Night Diary by Veera Hiramandani
In 1947, India is split into two countries, India and newly formed Pakistan. Unfortunately, it becomes too dangerous for Nisha to stay in Muslim majority Pakistan and her family must embark on a risky journey across the border to India.
Each Tiny Spark by Pablo Cartaya
In this timely tale, Emilia, a sixth grade Latinx girl with ADHD, is researching her town, Merryville, for a school project. Through her research, she learns more about a plan to solve overcrowding in nearby schools, and begins to form her own opinions about this and other issues facing her community.
Teen
Tristan Strong Punches a Hole In the Sky by Kwame Mbalia
Best-selling author Rick Riordan presents Kwame Mbalia’s epic fantasy, a middle grade American Gods set in a richly-imagined world populated with African American folk heroes and West African gods.
March (2013), Book One by John Lewis
Congressman John Lewis (GA-5) is an American icon, one of the key figures of the civil rights movement. His commitment to justice and nonviolence has taken him from an Alabama sharecropper’s farm to the halls of Congress, from a segregated schoolroom to the 1963 March on Washington, and from receiving beatings from state troopers to receiving the Medal of Freedom from the first African-American president. Now, to share his remarkable story with new generations, Lewis presents March, a graphic novel trilogy, in collaboration with co-writer Andrew Aydin and New York Times best-selling artist Nate Powell (winner of the Eisner Award and LA Times Book Prize finalist for Swallow Me Whole). March is a vivid first-hand account of John Lewis’ lifelong struggle for civil and human rights, meditating in the modern age on the distance traveled since the days of Jim Crow and segregation.
Dear Haiti, Love Alaine by Maika Moulite
When a school presentation goes very wrong, Alaine Beauparlant finds herself suspended, shipped off to Haiti and writing the report of a lifetime… You might ask the obvious question: What do I, a seventeen-year-old Haitian American from Miami with way too little life experience, have to say about anything?
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV.
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed.