* Thank You Mr. Falker   Patricia Polacco


This is an excellent read.  It is about a young girl who wants to learn to read but never really gets the hang of it.  She is always reading below level and hates to read out loud due to her inability to read.  She gets made fun for this and begins to hate school and not participate to her potential, until Mr. Falker comes to teach at the school.  He is a very passionate teacher and soon realizes that this young girl can not read.  He immidately sets up afterschool sessions with him and a female teacher and sets to teaching this young lady to read.  She soon has the ability to read and is in love with reading and school finally, and she owes it all  to that very special teacher, Mr. Falker.   Patricia Polacco says this is a semi true story because that little girl was her and that teacher was Mr. Falker.  This is very relatable and a great and encouraging read.  It is great for any age group.  It is recommended for 2nd grade and above, when reading really comes president and these struggles may start for students. 

Terrible Storm      Carol Hurst

This is a great story!  It is about a terrible storm, and it is told from a grandfather's point of view during the storm.  It starts with two old men sitting on the front porch watching the snow fall.  The recall where they where during the terrible storm of the century, and each has a completely different view of that storm.  One was with their family on the farm, and the other was at the general store.  The man on the farm had to dig out at least 10 feet of snow, while the other had to shovel a path from the general store in order to get home.  It is hilarious to see the illustrations and see how the snow keeps piling up.  There are the stereotypes of the old cliche of grandparents telling how they had to walk 10 miles to get somewhere, and also that old men sit on the porch discussing the weather all day long.   This story is great for young children, 1st grade and up will find this story entertaining.  It is realistic fiction because everyone can relate to how a snowstorm can be terrible, and can imagine their grandparents sitting on the porch discussing the weather.   It is an easy read and has funny, entertaining content. 

* Owl Moon       Jane Yolen



This is a great read.  It is about a young boy who is finally able to go owling with his father, an indication that he is mature enough to go.  During his travel it is cold, and dark and has to follow quickly to keep up.  Once they get to the designated spot, the father gives out a hoot and calls for an owl.  The owl returns the call and shows itself.  The young boy is thrilled and so is the father.  Soon they head back, and they know their relationship will forever be different.  The son knows that his father looks at him no longer as a young child, but as a mature kid.  The sons affection for the father changes as well, because now he has done something special with him and will forever remember.    The illustrations in this are gorgeous, the snow looks as if it is real and you can just feel the coldness of the night, and the darkness engulfing you.  It is a great read for kids of all ages, but is especially nice for young children who are about to reach that age of knowing and maturity, of coming of age.  2nd grade and older are best suited for this excellent read.  The content is not hard to understand but it might bring up questions from the younger children. 

* The View From Saturday   E.L. Konigsburg


This is an excellent realistic fiction novel about coming of age for four very different middle school young adults, who all join the quiz bowl team with the encouragement of a very special teacher.  Mrs. Olinski is a teacher who is left parapeligic who comes back to school to teach.  In her class are 4 very different students.  Nadia who is in the middle of divorcing parents, Noah who spent the summer with his grandfather, Julian who has just moved into a bed and breakfast, and Ethan who lives on a farm and has a very different family.  They come together and compliment eachother nicely, and over tea become "The Souls."  These 6th graders soon take the quiz bowl world by storm and win the acedmic bowl, which is un heard of because this group is younger than everyone else on the teams they compete against.  This is a great story of coming of age and learning to be comfortable in your identity.  It is easily relateable because some of the kids are bullied by the big mean kids in the school, and others are sensative and are learning to cope with it.  This story is best for 5th grade and up do to the content of the story, love, understanding and identity.  It is also a novel and can be long, with some mature content. 

* A Year Down Yonder    Richard Peck


This is realistic fiction.  This is a fantastic story about a young girl during the depression in chicago.  She is sent to live with her grandmother in the south because her family can not afford to keep her and are forced to move into a small one bedroom apartment.  The young woman moves in with her very unique grandmothe, and has to become accustomed to life in a small town in the south.  She begins school and does not have very nice clothes, and her clothes are different because she is from a big city, not like the others in her class.  She begins a crush on this boy, who a very popular girl has a crush on too.  She invites him over to help her with her math and duriing his visit a snake falls from the attic and scares the daylights out of him and he takes off home.  She thinks she is never going to see him again and will die from embaressment.  Soon after he is going to go away to college and he comes calling on her again and asks if she will wait for him.  She goes back to Chicago to be with her family, and during the summer she goes back to her grandmothers farm to marry that boy and start her life in that same little town she dreaded.    This is such a great story of finding something great during a time of duress.  This is a great read for young adults who are independent readers and enjoy a love story.  5th grade up through 12th grade could all enjoy this story equally, while getting different things out of it. 

* The Harmonica  Tony Johnston

This is an absolutely amazing story of a Jewish family in Nazi, Poland.    This is a heart wrenching story about a young family in Poland during the Nazi invasion.  This young boy receives a harmonica as a gift from his poor, coal mining father right before the family is captured by the Nazi's and taken to a concentration camp.   The boy uses his harmonica as a way to express his grief of being seperated from his parents and potentially losing them forever.  A guard over hears the boy playing the beautiful music his father taught him to play and has the boy play for him nightly.  As a reward the guard throws the boy scraps of bread and demands that he keeps playing.  The boy goes back to his cell, feeling guilty that he is being fed while everyone else is straving and being worked to death.  As he returns to his cell, another prisoner tells the boy thank you, thank you for playing the beautiful music and giving us all something to enjoy.   This story is very heart wrenching, and includes amazing illustrations.  These gorgeous illustrations start out light and airy, when talking about his family and his happiness, and get darker as each forelorn event is occurring.  As he talks about his years in the concentration camp it begins to get dark, until it is almost completely black and difficult to see.    This story is best suited for older school aged children, 5th grade and up due to the difficult subject matter of Nazis and Jewish concentration camps, the death and dispair would be too much for younger children to handle. 

* Something Beautiful  Sharon Dennis Wyeth


Something Beautiful is a great read!  It is a contemporary realistic fiction book because it is fiction, but is relatable and something that could happen.   Something Beautiful is about a young black girl who lives in an apartment in a bad neighborhood.  She learns the word beautiful in school and begins to search for her something beautiful in life.  She asks her aunt what is beautiful and she says her baby carl.  She asks the local farmer market owner and he says it his apples.  She asks friends in the neighborhood and they all tell her various toys, and finally she heads back home in efforts to find her something beautiful.  She approaches her apartment building and notices that someone has written the word DIE in red on the door to her apartment.  She goes upstairs and grabs a bucket and soap and decides to clean up her home.  She scrubs it off, picks up all the glass shards from garbage and broken bottles and decides that her home can be, and is beautiful.  She hopes to start a garden to care for, and when her mama comes home she asks her what her something beautiful is, and her mama tells her its her, and gives her a hug.  This is a very heart warming story and is relatable and realistic.  It is great for any age group, it is an easy read, but there may be some content that could upset younger children.  There are some images that may be hard for a younger child to understand.  There is a dipiction of a homeless woman living in a box.  There is also the issue of why someone would write DIE on someone's door. 

* My Sister's Rusty Bike  by Jim Aylesworth*    

This is a great children's book.  This is considered to be a traditional book because it tells the story of a little boy who imagines that he is on his sisters rusty bike, he travels all around the United States.  During his travels he encounters many different and unique people from these states and sees how people all over live.  This story is great for kindergartners all the way up to the third grade.  This story includes brightly illustrated pictures of each state he visits and all of the people he encounters.  The most intricate illustration is of Miss Pat.  She loves her purple cats, and as she pets them they purr loudly for her.    This book is great for the use of imagination.  It also is easily identifiable for most students, because riding their bike is always fun and a great adventure, and finally this book is great to introduce and teach the names of the states in the United States and location. 


genre: traditional
year: 1996
level: k-3
* jim aylesworth was an author mentioned many times on the website

* The Harmonica by Tony Johnston


   This is a very emotionally charged children's book.  It is centered in Nazi Poland, where a young Jewish family are living.  This family does not have a lot of money, but has each other.  It begins with a mother, father and young Polish boy.  The father gives the boy a gift of a harmonica, with the little money he could scrape together from his job as a coal miner.  He tells his young son to learn to play soft and slow, and the young boy soon learns to repeat the songs on his harmonica that the family sing together.  Soon the family is invaded by Nazi soldiers and taken to be slaves at a concentration camp.  The boy and his family are split up, and in the boys room (designed more as a cell) the boy expresses his grief of being separated from his family through his harmonica.  He soon has a heart wrenching feeling and suddenly has a feeling this he has forever lost his parents.  He plays his harmonica louder and faster, and a Nazi guard hears the boy playing his beautiful music.  The guard forces him to play his harmonica for him, and as a reward the guard tosses the starving boy scraps of bread.  The young boy feels guilt for getting the bread, while the others are starving back in their cells.  When the young boy returns to his cell after the guard has fallen asleep, another captive thanks the boy for his beautiful music, and the boys spirit is lifted. 
   The illustrations in this book are gorgeous.  The pages start out with a light, bright color while the boy is content with his family.  As the Nazi's approach the pages begin to progress into darker and dim images, until the pages are extremely dark and forlorn, representing his life in slavery at the concentration camp.  This story is intended for older children, grades 4 and higher, because of the content, which could be too emotionally charged for younger children, and the illustrations which could be traumatic.


genre: traditional
level: 4th grade and above
illustrator: Ron Mazellan
year: 2004
* denotes author was found in the text, or on the companion website.