Great Summer Reading for Kids (and Parents!) of All Ages
Summer is coming! I have been waiting so long for the hot weather and lazy days…days meant for reading under a shady tree, at the beach, on the patio, or lounging indoors during a summer thunderstorm. Summer is a great time for kids to read, freed from classes and teachers and essays and reading logs.
Finally free to pick the books they want to read, not the books other people want them to read, where do kids turn for guidance on great books? Librarians are a good choice, of course, and at my local library, our librarians always create engaging displays of books, new and old,, to entice summer reading. Bookstores offer suggestions for the latest in young reader publications and I can always count on Scholastic to offer great ideas with their summer reading buzz program.
I’ve put together a short list of summer reading picks that will set kids (and parents) well on their way to a summer of great reading. Feel free to add your own recommendations in the comments below and read on!
Elementary School Readers — My fourth grader introduced me to the Dear America series and I love it. Although the series seems geared towards girls (all the narrators are girls and the website is purple and flowery), my son was enthralled by these historically-based novels. The series takes readers from colonial times through the Revolution, and then on through important events and times of our American history, right up through the 1940s. I sure hope more are coming. My favorite is Voyage on the Great Titanic: The Diary of Margaret Ann Brady, which tells the story of a young girl who survived passage on the Titanic. Filled with fascinating details about the Titanic, thought-provoking depictions of class and poverty issues of the time, and truly moving in its portrayal of that horrible “night to remember” (with age-appropriate descriptions), The Diary of Margaret Ann Brady is wonderful and typical of the high-quality of the Dear America series.
For boys (and girls) wanting more in historical fiction, Lauren Tarshis has begun a great new series for Scholastic geared more towards boys, the I Survived series, which takes events from history and tells the story from the point of view of a child who lived through it. The Titanic is represented, in I Survived the Sinking of the Titanic, 1912, as is Hurricane Katrina and the shark attacks of 1916.
Kids always like mysteries and in addition to the wonderfully creepy John Bellairs books, I also like the historically-based (again!) mystery series by Carol Marsh, including The Colonial Caper Mystery at Williamsburg and The Ghost of the Grand Canyon.
Middle-School Readers: I’ve got more historical fiction to recommend: Prisoners in the Palace by Michaela McColl, telling the sotry of a young maid in the service of Queen Victoria and Megiddo’s Shadow by Arthur Slade, about a sixteen-year old boy who lies about his age to fight in World War One and ends up fighting the Turks in Palestine.
All of the books I’ve recommended are also excellent reading choices for adults, parents or not. Enjoy your summer reading, everyone!
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