Book Finder

All the glorious, spooky, swoopy delights of Halloween congregate on one street for one perfectly bone-chilling night in Caldecott Honor artist Denise Fleming’s splendid Pumpkin Eye. Gorgeous, thick pulp paintings depict jack-o’-lanterns, bats, dragons, and toothless hags, while clever, memorable rhymes capture the very essence of Halloween: “Trick or treat, pounding feet, wretched witches roam the street.”

Zelinsky’s retelling of Rapunzel captures the possessiveness, confinement, and separation of a late 17th-century French tale by Mlle. la Force, where a mother powerfully resists her child’s inevitable growth.

A strange little man helps the miller’s daughter spin straw into gold for the king on the condition that she will give him her first-born child.

Loaded with positive, life-affirming advice for coping with loss as a child, this guide tells children what they need to know after a loss–that the world is still safe; life is good; and hurting hearts do mend. Written by a school counselor, this book helps comfort children facing of the worst and hardest kind of reality.

In 1802, when Champollion was eleven years old, he vowed to be the first person to read Egypt’s ancient hieroglyphs. He faced great challenges over the next twenty years as he searched for the elusive key to the mysterious writing.

What will happen when the sheep go trick-or-treating? Could there be wolves lurking in the woods, hoping to waylay them as they return home with their bags full of goodies? In crisp verse and whimsically eerie pictures, Nancy Shaw and Margot Apple tell the lively story of a remarkable Halloween adventure. Simple sentences, rhyming text, and a humorous tone make this the perfect treat for beginning readers.

Feiffer’s distorted perspectives on the things that “loom large” capture a range of human emotion with his usual deftness. Kids will commiserate with the saucer-eyed boy as he skates out of control, is afraid he won’t be picked for either team, or gets stuck high in a tree. And maybe things won’t be so scary next time.

Much has been written about the vast scientific importance of space exploration, but very little about the human side of being a member of an astronaut crew. In this book, with the help of journalist Susan Okie, Sally Ride shares the personal experience of traveling into space. America’s first woman astronaut answers questions most frequently asked about a journey through space.

On the day of her birth, nothing about Angelica Longrider suggested that she would one day become the greatest woodswoman of Tennessee. It’s not long before Angelica is vanquishing varmints such as Thundering Tarnation, a huge bear with a taste for settlers’ winter rations, and swallowing entire lakes in a gulp.

Cassie doesn’t have to actually go to the beach; she’s got her very own “tar beach” on the roof of her Harlem apartment building. From there, her imagination takes her on a journey through time and space. The artist’s quilt story was successfully adapted into this modern classic.

This anthology by well-loved children’s poet Jack Prelutsky includes twelve sprightly poems about Thanksgiving, including When Daddy Carves the Turkey, I Ate Too Much, and If Turkeys Thought.

All the relatives arrive for an enormous Thanksgiving dinner. But this year nothing seems to go right. First the turkey slides down the icy hill and into the pond — plop! splash! Then the bakery sells out of pies. It looks like it’s going to be a pretty bleak holiday…until Grandmother reminds everyone that there’s more to Thanksgiving than a turkey and trimmings.

The baby beebee bird, new to the zoo, is singing his song…ALL NIGHT LONG! Nothing the animals do or say will stop him. They come up with a plan to teach the baby beebee bird that nighttime is really best for sleeping.