Sunday, August 6, 2023

Best Reads of T3 2023 (and June and July)

Here are my favorite books that I read during third trimester, June, and July. All images and summaries from Goodreads.


Picture Books


Some people think hats are fancy things you can buy at a dressy store, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. In this book, acorns and raspberries are snug hats for your fingers, and an empty pudding cup is a good hat for a stuffed bear. Pajama pants make dangly hats, books can be dramatic hats, and bubbles make very fine hats as well (if temporary). Readers will be delighted to discover that anything can be a hat if you believe it is. 


A mighty tree stands on the banks of a winding river, bearing silent witness to the flow of time and change. A family farms the fertile valley. Soon, a village sprouts, and not long after, a town. Residents learn to harness the water, the wind, and the animals in order to survive and thrive. The growing population becomes ever more industrious and clever, bending nature itself to their will and their ambition: redirecting rivers, harvesting lumber, reshaping the land, even extending daylight itself. 



Early Reader


One, Two, Kat, and Four are starting a club, and every member is good at something! Except naming clubs. If only there were some kind of sign about what their club should be called!



Middle Grade Novels



When a neighbor’s big, scary dog goes missing, it seems like only Marisol is worried he’s up to no good. But is there more to this lost-dog story than meets the eye?











Nobody said starting fifth grade would be easy, and Penny Lowry's anxiety means a million questions are always spinning through her thoughts. Luckily she's got a lot to look forward to, like her favorite after-school activity, Art Club, and seeing her best friend Violet again after spending the whole summer apart.

The thing is, Violet has been acting weird ever since she got back. She never wants to hang out anymore, says Art Club is for babies, and spends all her time with Riley, the meanest girl in school. Did Penny do something wrong? And if she did, can she undo it?




Ben Bellows—who failed the Language Arts section of the Florida State test—and three classmates are stuck in a summer school class. But these kids aren't dumb—they're divergent thinkers who approach things in a different way than traditional school demands. And they all have a passion for Sandbox, a Minecraft-type game. 

Each chapter is told through the perspective of one of the four students, who each write in a different style (art, verse, stream of consciousness).




Kevin has a bad attitude. He's the one who laughs when you trip and fall. In fact, he may have been the one who tripped you in the first place. He has a real knack for rubbing people the wrong way--and he's even figured out a secret way to do it with poems. But what happens when the tables are turned and he is the one getting picked on?










Nonfiction


In 1936, eighth grader MacNolia Cox became the first African American to win the Akron, Ohio, spelling bee. And with that win, she was asked to compete at the prestigious National Spelling Bee in Washington, DC, where she and a girl from New Jersey were the first African Americans invited since its founding. She left her home state a celebrity ... But celebration turned to chill when the train crossed the state line into Maryland, where segregation was the law of the land. Prejudice and discrimination ruled—on the train, in the hotel, and, sadly, at the spelling bee itself. 

After the Industrial Revolution in the 1880s, the Cayuhoga River in Cleveland, Ohio, caught fire almost twenty times, earning Cleveland the nickname “The Mistake on the Lake.” Waste dumping had made fires so routine that local politicians and media didn’t pay them any mind, and other Cleveland residents laughed off their combustible river and even wrote songs about it.

But when the river ignited again in June 1969, the national media picked up on the story and added fuel to the fire of the recent environmental movement. 


Take a journey to the ocean's twilight zone in Search for a Giant Squid! An exciting mixture of fiction and nonfiction, this choose-your-own-adventure-style story allows readers to take on the mantle of a teuthologist looking for a giant squid in its natural habitat. Once readers pick their submersible, pilot, and dive site, the adventure begins!



1920s cotton buyer Earle Dickson worked for Johnson & Johnson and had a klutzy wife who often cut herself. The son of a doctor, Earle set out to create an easier way for her to bandage her injuries. Band-Aids were born, but Earle's bosses at the pharmaceutical giant weren't convinced, and it wasn't until the Boy Scouts of America tested Earle's prototype that this ubiquitous household staple was made available to the public. Soon Band-Aids were selling like hotcakes, and the rest is boo-boo history.



Find out everything you've ever wanted to know about the rocks and minerals under our feet and deep in the Earth's crust. Budding geologists will love reading about how rocks form, the names of the coolest rocks and minerals, and rare and beautiful gemstones. Packed with weird-but-true facts and tons of cool info, this Level 3 reader explores the incredible world of geology.

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