A dear friend recently gave me A House on Mango Street—a book she was reading while preparing for a new year of teaching 8th graders. After she read parts aloud to me, I could understand her attachment to this book and her excitement to share it with her class. Written a couple decades ago by Sandra Cisneros, A House on Mango Street is a timeless, beautiful, and very human story (told in short vignettes), full of joy and sorrow. It is one of those books that you want to share sentence after sentence with someone and also write parts in your journal. It was a hard-to-put- down book.
After reading Ms. Cisneros’s book, I remembered others that reminded me of it – books about home, laughter, struggles, growing up in hard times and places, and friendship.
A House on Mango Street, a good read for students in 8th grade and above, focuses on Esperanza, a Mexican-American twelve-year old girl, but also on her family and her neighbors. Her parents have bought their first house but it is not one she is glad for because it is small and run down and in the middle of a crowded Latino neighborhood in Chicago. The theme of how belonging, friendship, family, and community fold into a person’s becoming was both sweet and hard to witness.
Twig by Elizabeth Orten Jones is a perfect chapter book for new readers but also a wonderful read aloud for those in preschool and above. It’s a children’s fantasy novel about a girl named Twig and her backyard adventures, with a sweet spotlight on her affection for all her apartment neighbors.
You Bring the Distant Near by Mitali Perkins. I enjoyed this wonderful novel last month and invited several 8th and 9thgrade girls to join me in reading it. (We’ll meet later this summer at a local cupcake shop to talk about it.) This story focuses on five different women of one family with Bengali roots (from grandmother, to her two daughters, to her two granddaughters) and their individual experiences making their lives in America, but also how important family and community are to their formation as women and family . . . and their stories.
I Captured the Castle by Dodie Smith. Years ago, I was intrigued by this book when several women shared that they read it as teenagers and couldn’t forget it when they grew up. It is the story of seventeen-year old Cassandra and her family who live in a ramshackle castle. They are a quirky family and very poor. There are many fun, and awkwardly uncomfortable, exploits in this coming-of-age story.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith. One of my daughters just recently read this for the first time and was overwhelmed by the sheer bittersweet - ness of it. The book is set in 1912 and centers on Francine and her family as they make their life in a tenement apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
And, of course, don’t forget classics like The Little Princess by Francis Hodgson Burnett or Great Expectations by Charles Dickens or Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. They are full of young characters, hard hardship, friends, community, and growing up.
Summer Picture Books
I wandered around the children’s section of Barnes and Noble and discovered these wonderful picture books that fit the “what a good summer read” category.
Wave by Suzy Lee
This wordless book about a young girl meeting and interacting with waves at a beach is a delight. The faces this cute little makes at the water, as well as how the waves are personified, will make you smile and laugh, and hopefully cause some fun conversations.
The World Belonged to Us by Jacqueline Woodson and illustrated by Leo Espinosa
The first book I’ve read in a long time that captures the freedom and delights of summer and also reminded me of my childhood in the 1970s (even though it is set in Brooklyn, and I grew up in Wilmington, DE). I loved the summer activities and how the writer captured them with such fun, poetic sentences and how the illustrator captured them through the colorful, happy illustrations.
Flip: How the Frisbee Took Flight by Margaret Muirhead and illustrated by Adam Gustavson
I realized while reading this book that I never actually thought about how the Frisbee was invented! But this story, with its fabulous illustrations, piqued my interest and satisfied my history-loving heart. We meet a young Fred and Lu. They enjoyed tossing a tin popcorn lid around the backyard. Later, they get married and kept trying to figure out how to perfect the flying-disc (it takes them twenty years!). It’s a great history and science story.
There is a Flower at the Tip of My Nose Smelling Me by Alice Walker and illustrated by Queenbee Monyei
This is a newly illustrated version of this classic piece by Alice Walker. What a wonderful read to share with others with its focus on the natural world and us in it. I enjoyed the juxtaposition of how I smell the roses to how “a flower at the tip of my nose smelling me…” (and how this happens throughout the book with other natural elements).
The Honey Bee by Kristen Hall and illustrated by Isabelle Arsenault
Summer is a good time to think about bees and what they are doing during the year. The words and rhymes are very fun (and informative) and the illustrations made me glad to be reading this book. I could picture myself with one of my daughters on my lap enjoying this fun book together.
One Smart Cookie: Bite-sized Lessons for School Years and Beyond by Amy Krouse Rosenthal and illustrated by Jane Dyer and Brooke Dyer (Illustrator)
I haven’t thought about this book (and its companions) in years, so I was glad to see it at B&N. I do remember being enchanted by how the author was able to take words like kindness and empathy (character traits we would want to help our children know and grow in) and teach them through focusing on cookies and baking them. Also, I have love love loved the illustrations of Jane Dyer over the years, so her work in collaboration with her daughter in this book made it even more wonderful. This book is one to read and return to while getting your children ready for a new school year and thinking of how to be “others focused.”
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This post was written by Leslie Bustard, one of the co-editors of Wild Things and Castles in the Sky.
