Best picture books, chapter books, young adult books, graphic novels and non fiction for kids.
I used the Boston Public Library’s children’s book lists for years when my children were young. We used to read ten picture books every night because picture books worked for all three ages, and my kids expected each book to be outstanding. This meant that I had to seek out award-winning books so as not…
In Japan, the crane (tsuru) is a symbol of peace, good fortune, and longevity. It is a bird of happiness and spreads good luck. It is believed that folding 1,000 paper cranes (senbazuru) will help to bring about hope, healing, and peace. These children’s books featuring origami cranes also send a message of hope and…
In Conversation: Mia Wenjen and Jolene Gutiérrez Mar 31, 2026 Mia Wenjen and Jolene Gutiérrez both grapple with the cruelty of internment and family separation in their new picture books Barbed Wire Between Us and Unbreakable: A Japanese American Family in an American Incarceration Camp, respectively. The two authors spoke about depicting difficult subject matter for young readers,…
Please welcome my guest author, Charlotte Offsay, with her list of 8 Summer-Themed Picture Books. Summer will be here before you know it, especially where I live on the East Coast, where we go from Spring to Summer in about 9 seconds. We are giving away a copy of The Quiet Ocean. To enter, please…
Thank you to Gramms AI for sponsoring this post. Every parent knows bedtime storytelling is magic. But if you’ve ever struggled to find books with characters who look like your child — or tried to read with energy and voices after a long day — you know the magic has limits. Gramms is an iOS…
This song is based on the powerful book – Barbed Wire Between Us – that follows two little girls held in the same detention camp (Fort Sill, Oklahoma) decades apart. Sadly, their story of family separation and illegal detention echoes recent news about places such as the ICE detention facility at Dilley and others, causing…
We are thrilled to announce that Barbed Wire Between Us received its 3rd Starred Review, this time from School Library Journal: Gr 2-5–Set in Fort Sill in Lawton, Oklahoma, Barbed Wire Between Us uses verse poetry to tell the story of how Fort Sill was used as an internment camp for Japanese Americans during World…