Popular Books for Every Age
VIA MERCHANT
Recommended for ages: 8 and up
Technically, National Book Award winner Jacqueline Woodson’s melodic memoir Brown Girl Dreaming is a 336-page poem. But trust that you and your kids will gulp it down in a single sitting—it’s that riveting. Following a young, naive and curious Woodson through her post-Jim Crow American childhood in the 1960s and ’70s, we meet a girl confounded by things she can’t change yet equally determined to succeed. Rhythmic and mesmerizing, this 2014 short book is full of quiet spirit and insights as a young girl discovers herself as a reader, a writer and so much more.
VIA MERCHANT
Recommended for ages: 8 and up
The Newbery Honor winner Where the Mountain Meets the Moon is a stunningly illustrated collection of stories inspired by Chinese folklore from inimitable Asian American author Grace Lin. Young Minli is on a mission to find the old man on the Moon, hoping to revive her family’s fortunes. Along the way, she encounters creatures from myth, legend and the childhood tales her father has shared with her.
Follow up this 2009 book with Lin’s companion novel, Starry River of the Sky, which features stories of old wise men, wives transformed into toads and the old Magistrate Tiger from Where the Mountain Meets the Moon. Lin’s interwoven tales will have kids reading and rereading as they make astounding connections between the stories.
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