These are books that kids will want to read-or should read, but will enjoy doing so. Board book, picture books, kid lit, elementary school books, middle school books, high school books, all age comic books and more will be talked about here.
The Clarke Calculator is something that I’ve never seen, touched or used, yet its application is demonstrated everywhere I go. It’s not a regular calculator. Heck, it’s not even a scientific calculator. The Brilliant Calculator: How Mathematician Edith Clarke Helped Electrify America follows Edith Clarke’s lifelong passion for numbers and her specific invention that helped electric power wires handle to juice needed for a growing America.
Imagine a world where Indiana Jones and the National Treasure movies never existed. Yeah, it would certainly be a world where quality cinema was lacking three or four excellent films between the two series. But, even in that situation, kids would still be fascinated by archeology and ancient worlds. That’s where Tales of Ancient Worlds: Adventures in Archeology hits home. It is a reference book, but education and the fruits that it yields are awesome. This is a book that’s tailor-made for fourth or fifth-graders on many levels.
I contend that reluctant readers aren’t really reluctant; it’s just that they haven’t found their jam. Their jam is the book that speaks to them, and the sooner they find their jam, the quicker they will start to devour any of that ilk that stands in their way. Thus begins the domino chain of academic success, personal happiness, world peace and teachers everywhere rejoicing. One Cool Duck: King of Cool is a kid’s first graphic novel that could be that book for some younger elementary school students.
Have you ever read a book and thought that you knew what it was about, but then saw what the author’s intentions were and it ran in the opposite direction of what you thought? Afterward, Everything Was Different only sounds like the sequel to the reboot of Sex and the City. In reality, Afterward, Everything Was Different is a wordless book by Rafael Yockteng with illustrations by Jairo Buitrago. I know, how a wordless book needed an author is a mystery, but let’s look at the book and why I initially, and still do to a point, enjoy it.
I like to imagine conversations between myself and some of the elementary school aged children that I teach. Here’s one that’s running through me head right now about Who Ate What? A Historical Guessing Game for Food Lovers.
8YO kid: I don’t like to read
Me: Do you like ninjas and cave people?
Kid: Yes, highly respected elementary school teacher, I do like to look at pictures of them.
Me: You should check out Who Ate What?
Kid: That sounds like a book that would make me read something. Me no like printed paper learning.
Me: Well, it is a book, but it’s an illustrated book that looks at well known civilizations, how they lived and what they ate or drank; thus the title, Who Ate What?
Any teacher that has had to read umpteen hundred essays on the same inventors knows my pain. It’s the exercise in rolling your eyes when the student says that their essay will be on the same inventor, who invented that thing that seems to be a go-to for elementary school kids. There’s a void of books aimed at that audience who need to know about more people that history might have forgotten. Josephine and Her Dishwashing Machine is an illustrated book that joyously plugs that hole.
The story of Maria Mitchell is a fabulous one for many reasons. It’s about a young woman who has always loved studying the night sky and the objects that occupy its space. In the mid-1850s she was living in Nantucket and she’s noticing something amiss in the darkened sky. It’s a blur, a cottonball blur of a thing that’s set against crystal clear objects that are perfectly in focus. Her Eyes on the Stars: Maria Mitchell, Astronomer is the story about her childhood fascination with the sky; and her young adult life when she sees what just might be the first comet discovered by an American.
Let’s party like it’s 1977. The Hardy Boys are on television, it’s Sunday night and I’m about to relax and get my mystery on. I had read a couple of the books, but for me, it was the television version that I enjoyed. Your version of The Hardy Boys might be different. There was a series that ran from 2020-2023 on Hulu, the classic books, and now, their literary sibling has been modernized. Change is not a bad thing and when it comes to The Hardy Boys, their adventures and lifestyle are modern-day, but they still have the same hallmarks of the elements that brought them here.
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